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Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time
From the moment it was founded 350 years ago, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich drove our understanding of astronomy, navigation and time. Louise Devoy explores eight milestones in the history of this pioneering scientific institution
The big bang moment 1675: Charles II sparks a star-gazing revolution In the 17th century, the great maritime nations were vying to solve a puzzle that had confounded philosophers for many centuries: how to determine exact positions on the Earth’s surface. And in Britain, Charles II took a major step to ensure his realm’s position at the head of the pack. On 4 March 1675, the king signed a royal warrant appointing John Flamsteed as the first “astronomical observator”, tasked with “perfecting the art of navigation”. Flamsteed’s specific objective was to devise a method by which sailors could establish their longitude (east–west position) at sea – which involved measuring the positions of celestial bodies – and of knowing the time at a ship’s local position. And Flamsteed would get to carry out this vital research from the surroundings of the country’s first state-funded, purpose-built scientific institution: the Royal Observatory. It was urgent work, because England’s great rival, France, had stolen a march: Louis XIV had established an observatory in Paris nearly a decade earlier. Flamsteed was, in effect, playing catch-up. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T809MT-CMYKWeb-Ready-7606aa3.jpg" width="2663" height="1775" alt="an illustration showing a large crowd looking at several artefacts including a globe, a map, and a satellite dish" title="King Louis XIV visits the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1671. The creation of an observatory in the French capital had left England playing catch-up (Image by Alamy)" /> The size of the task facing the astronomer clearly wasn’t lost on Charles II, for the king appointed none other than the celebrated architect Christopher Wren to design the observatory. Wren’s chosen site was the hilltop ruins of Greenwich Castle – and it was here that the foundation stone was laid on 10 August 1675. With its lofty windows, royal portraits and accurate pendulum clocks, the octagonal ‘star chamber’, completed in 1676, was grand in appearance. Unfortunately, it was also unsuitable for mapping the stars, as it was 13.5° askew from the meridian, an imaginary north-south line connecting the poles. So Wren designed another building nearby. This one would last for the remainder of Flamsteed’s tenure, before being demolished, rebuilt and extended as the Meridian Observatory. As for Flamsteed, he went on to conceive Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), by which he produced an average (‘mean’) 24-hour day that could be tracked using a mechanical clock year round. And that would have ramifications across the planet. Read more | A brief history of astronomy Dressed for success 1767: How a man in a padded suit transformed the art of navigation No one could accuse Nevil Maskelyne of not being dedicated to his job. In the dead of night across the mid-1760s, the fifth Astronomer Royal could be found staring up at the sky for hour upon hour, while straining his ears to hear the beats of a nearby clock. Dressed in an extravagant padded suit made from wool, silk and linen, Maskelyne was prepared for all that a British winter could throw at him. Not even perishing temperatures could stand in the way of the task in hand: to devise a ‘lunar distance method’ to calculate longitude at sea. This technique required mariners to measure the angular distance between the moon and a specific star, then compare it to Greenwich time. And they all used data gleaned from Maskelyne’s meticulous study of the movement of the stars. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1767-L4962-001-CMYKWeb-Ready-30917ec.jpg" width="1709" height="1139" alt="Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne wore this wool, silk and linen suit to ward off the perishing cold while studying the stars (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" title="Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne wore this wool, silk and linen suit to ward off the perishing cold while studying the stars (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" /> This was, however, far from a one-man endeavour. Maskelyne was joined on his freezing vigils by his assistant, David Kinnebrook, and enlisted a network of mathematicians – dubbed ‘computers’ – to work remotely on calculating the predicted position of the moon over the year ahead. The Astronomer Royal even had a team of ‘comparers’ check the computers’ work (which paid off when two of them were found to be copying one another’s work). All this enabled Maskelyne to produce the Nautical Almanac, the first edition of which was made available on 6 January 1767. It quickly became an essential tool in navigation, reducing the time taken to make longitude calculations from hours to minutes. Updated annually, the Almanac became a required element of navigators’ training, and set the trend for mariners to calculate their position relative to Greenwich. High standards 1833: A curious metal sphere regulates clocks It can be seen from miles around – and with good reason. Sitting atop the Royal Observatory is a large red, metal ball that rises to the top of a mast at the same time every day, and drops a few minutes later. For those who haven’t set eyes on it before, it makes for a strange sight. But what is it there for? To answer that question, we need to rewind to 1764 when John Harrison, the celebrated English clockmaker, sent his fourth marine timekeeper, later known as ‘H4’, on a trial voyage to Barbados. The clock performed exceptionally well, losing a mere 39.2 seconds over 47 days at sea. To Harrison’s delight, it proved that such devices could provide mariners accurate reference times for calculating longitude. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/dreamstimexxl73355384-CMYKWeb-Ready-1ba1cb2.jpg" width="6567" height="4378" alt="A photograph of a large red brick building, with a domed roof on the right. There is a tower with a red ball on the top. Behind the building there is a purple and orange cloudy sunset" title="The time ball was installed on the turret of Flamsteed House at the Royal Observatory in 1833. It dropped at 1pm each day, enabling mariners to check their on-board chronometers (Image by Dreamstime)" /> Other clockmakers developed Harrison’s innovative ideas into a standard design that was cheaper and easier to reproduce. By the 1820s, the ‘marine chronometer’ was being used on both commercial and Royal Navy ships. But these chronometers only worked if they were telling the correct time when ships left port. That’s where the Greenwich ‘time ball’ came in. A time ball is a large spherical device that drops at a predetermined time of day, enabling mariners to set their clocks by it. The first modern example of this technology was erected in Portsmouth in 1829. Greenwich’s, however, would be the most famous. It was installed in 1833 on Flamsteed House, at the heart of the Observatory, providing maximum visibility from the Thames. Ever since, it has risen halfway up the mast at 12.55pm, climbed to the top at 12.58pm and then dropped at precisely 1pm GMT. Soon time balls were appearing at harbours and observatories around the globe, meaning that mariners could check their chronometers against accurate clocks, even during the longest of voyages. Timetable drama 1852: Greenwich rides to the railways' rescue Take a stroll down Corn Street in the heart of Bristol and you’ll come across a clock mounted to the wall of the city’s old corn exchange. There’s nothing unusual about that, you may think. But take a closer look and you’ll notice that this elegant 1820s timepiece has two hands for minutes: a red one for GMT and a black one for local Bristol time. The clock is a curious snapshot of a bygone age, and also a marker of a technological conundrum that the Royal Observatory played a central role in solving. The mid-19th century was very much the age of the railways – by the 1840s tracks were snaking across the country. This was all well and good. But when, in 1847, the railway companies decided to coordinate their timetables across Britain using GMT, they ran into a problem. Back then, Britain’s cities relied on local times set by sundials, varying by as much as 30 minutes between west and east. So how could the railway companies ensure that these times were perfectly aligned? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-170477153-CMYKWeb-Ready-b814769.jpg" width="2589" height="1726" alt="With its three hands, the clock on Bristol’s Corn Exchange offers a snapshot of an age when Britain’s cities relied on a variety of local times (Image by Getty Images)" title="With its three hands, the clock on Bristol’s Corn Exchange offers a snapshot of an age when Britain’s cities relied on a variety of local times (Image by Getty Images)" /> Enter George Biddell Airy, the seventh Astronomer Royal. Airy reasoned that a new technology – that of sending impulses via telegraph wires to a series of synchronised dials – could provide a solution. And so he ordered a new timepiece – the Shepherd Motor Clock – to be installed at the Royal Observatory. From 1852, the clock began sending daily time signals to railway stations across London and Kent, along with hourly signals to the Electric Telegraph Company on London’s Strand for national distribution. Train travel would never be the same again and, by 1880, GMT had been embraced as Britain’s legal Civil Time. Read more | Art, culture and science in the Restoration period A moment in the sun 1874: Greenwich leads the race to record the transit of Venus For astronomers everywhere, 9 December 1874 was like Christmas come early. Star gazers counted down the days to this landmark date, while George Biddell Airy ordered expeditions to Egypt, New Zealand and the Indian Ocean to observe the amazing event unfolding overhead. That event was a transit of Venus, a rare astronomical phenomenon in which the planet appears to cross the Sun as a slow-moving black dot. This was the first time that the transit had occurred since 1769, and the first such event since the invention of photography in the 1820s. Little wonder astronomers were excited. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T4323-001-CMYKWeb-Ready-44133fe.jpg" width="5686" height="3790" alt="An observation hut is set up in Greenwich ahead of the transit of Venus in 1874. This astronomical phenomenon enabled star-gazers to accurately calculate the Sun-Earth distance (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" title="An observation hut is set up in Greenwich ahead of the transit of Venus in 1874. This astronomical phenomenon enabled star-gazers to accurately calculate the Sun-Earth distance (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" /> And their excitement was justified. By timing the transit’s key moments as seen from different locations on Earth, star gazers can measure the Sun–Earth distance, known as the ‘astronomical unit’. This yardstick (just under 93 million miles) is still used by scientists today. Ahead of the 1874 transit, Airy ordered special telescopes known as photoheliographs to project the Sun’s disc onto glass plates. However, his teams struggled with the kit, and the photoheliographs failed to capture the transit with any great accuracy. Despite those issues, the transit of Venus inspired a renewed interest in sun studies. Greenwich assistant EW Maunder started to compile a daily record of sunspot observations. In 1904, Maunder and his wife, Annie, assembled 30 years of sunspot data into the ‘butterfly diagram’ that still underpins our understanding of the Sun’s 11-year magnetic cycle. A degree of certainty 1884: The world aligns itself to Greenwich John Flamsteed had been dead for more than a century. Yet, on 13 October 1884, his great brainchild, Greenwich Mean Time, truly went global. On that day, delegates at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC voted in favour of making Greenwich the world’s prime meridian, or 0° longitude. The decision was influenced by a combination of technological supremacy and pragmatism. Greenwich was one of only four observatories with a suitably accurate telescope – the Airy Transit Circle Telescope – to define a meridian. And more than 70 per cent of shipping companies by tonnage already relied on the Greenwich meridian. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2YXWWWX-CMYKWeb-Ready-602ff19.jpg" width="3242" height="2161" alt="Delegates at the 1884 International Meridian Conference agreed to use the Greenwich meridian as 0° longitude (Image by Alamy)" title="Delegates at the 1884 International Meridian Conference agreed to use the Greenwich meridian as 0° longitude (Image by Alamy)" /> The delegates also agreed that the Universal Day – a 24-hour period to be used as a common reference to record events around the world – should begin at midnight GMT on the Greenwich meridian. This would hardly have come as a surprise: a year earlier, railroads in the US had already agreed to use standard time zones based on hourly meridians from Greenwich. The delegates assembled in the American capital that October day voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Universal Day, and countries started to define their own standard time zones as hourly intervals before or after Greenwich. The result was the familiar time-zone system we use today. Seeing double 1893: The Royal Observatory makes its biggest statement yet Was Greenwich under threat? The International Meridian Conference of 1884 might have confirmed the Royal Observatory’s primacy in the world of astronomy. But, within a year, the eighth Astronomer Royal, William Christie, was voicing his concerns that the principal telescope at Greenwich was being overtaken by newer, better instruments at rival observatories across Europe and North America. Determined to keep Greenwich out in front of the chasing pack, Christie persuaded the Admiralty to fund a new instrument, and that 28-inch diameter lens telescope – still the largest of its type in Britain – came into use in 1893. Most other telescopes at Greenwich were designed to be fixed into position to ensure the accurate measurement of the stars for timekeeping and navigation. The Great Equatorial Telescope – named after its mount, which kept the instrument moving parallel to the Earth’s equator – was part of a new generation designed for astrophotography. With a clockwork drive that kept the instrument moving in sync with the stars from east to west, it could be used to take photos with very long exposures stretching to several hours, capturing impressive views of faint gas clouds (nebulae). However, astronomers struggled to configure the heavy glass lens for photography, and so the telescope was reassigned to the study of double stars. By measuring the changing angle between an orbiting pair of stars, the astronomers could now calculate the mass of these distant suns. All that came to an end in 1971 when the Great Equatorial Telescope was finally retired. However, you can still see this extraordinary instrument – housed in its distinctive onion-shaped dome – at Greenwich today. Read more | A brief history of daylight saving time Pip pip hooray 1924: GMT is piped into homes across Britain If we want to know the time in 2025, all we have to do is check the phone in our pocket, or glance at the digital watch on our wrists. Across most of the 20th century, of course, that wasn’t an option. If Britons sought an accurate time-check that they could, quite literally, set their clocks and watches by, then they had to turn on their radios and listen out for the familiar strains of the ‘six pips’. The six pips first entered the public consciousness on 5 February 1924, when the ninth Astronomer Royal, Frank Dyson (below), announced a collaboration with the BBC. The Royal Observatory would start sending electrical impulses down a telephone wire to the newly created broadcaster. These would then be converted into a series of six audio alerts – or ‘pips’ – that would go out on the radio on the hour, every hour. But while some technologies were underscoring Greenwich’s enduring relevance, others were undermining it. In the 1930s, scientists developed clocks based on the natural vibration of quartz crystals; then, a decade later, the first atomic timekeepers began to appear. Both offered reliability and accuracy that the system of measuring time by the stars couldn’t match. This wasn’t the only threat to the Royal Observatory’s pre-eminence in the 20th century. As the march of industry impacted visibility across London’s skies, so Greenwich’s suitability for the practice of astrophysics declined. Soon it became clear that the Observatory would have to move. And it did so twice – first to East Sussex in 1957; then to Cambridge in 1990. Eight years later, it shut altogether. Time had finally caught up with the great old scientific institution. But its huge contribution to the fields of astronomy, timekeeping and navigation cannot be doubted – as the many thousands of people who visit the Royal Observatory museum that now occupies the famous Greenwich complex will no doubt testify. John Flamsteed would surely be proud. Dr Louise Devoy is senior curator at the Royal Observatory and author of Royal Observatory Greenwich: A History in Objects (October, 2025) This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France
The wrongful conviction for treason of a Jewish army captain in France in the late 19th century exposed antisemitism and virulent nationalism – but also, as Mike Rapport reveals, sparked a flood of ‘fake news’ that presaged the worst of the modern media landscape
In the oppressive heat of his cell in the Mont-Valérien military prison west of Paris on 31 August 1898, Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry wrote a despairing letter to his wife, drank half a bottle of rum, and killed himself. This desperate act was a pivotal moment in one of the best-known causes celebres in modern history: the Dreyfus Affair. The story of Henry’s suicide, following his arrest for forging a document in the controversial case, was co-opted by the nationalist rightwing media as part of a tidal wave of coverage that threatened to destabilise French democracy and public trust in the Republic. The background is well known today. In September 1894, Henry, a counter-espionage officer, had uncovered evidence of a mole within French military intelligence. A cleaner working in the German embassy (and in Henry’s pay) had found a memorandum, since dubbed the ‘bordereau’, written by an officer in the French General Staff revealing military secrets. The handwriting was identified as that of Alfred Dreyfus, an army captain then working in the War Ministry, who was arrested, court-martialled, publicly degraded and hauled off to solitary confinement on the notoriously harsh penal colony of Devil’s Island, off French Guiana. But the army had the wrong man. Contradictions and irregularities in the case soon began to appear. In August 1896, the new head of military intelligence, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, was examining more papers stolen from the German embassy. The handwriting on one was identical to that in the bordereau used to convict Dreyfus – but the signature was that of Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a dissipated, debt-ridden, disreputable officer who had been selling secrets to the Germans for two years. Dreyfus, Picquart realised, was innocent. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/BAL1756949-CMYKWeb-Ready-2c9d689.jpg" width="3683" height="2456" alt="An engraving shows a man lying dead on the floor, while a police officer kneels over him. Another police officer stands by his head, and two more officers are entering the room in the background" title="An engraving depicts the discovery of the suicide of Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry following his arrest for forging a letter incriminating Dreyfus. Some thought his crime justifiable (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Ignoring the errors Even after this discovery, Dreyfus remained incarcerated for years longer because government officials, the army and large segments of public opinion refused to accept that a terrible error had been made. In part this was a result of the desire to maintain national security by authorities who were keen to avoid demoralising the army just as France secured a military alliance with the Russian empire, and amid heightened tensions with Germany following its annexation of the Alsace-Lorraine region from France in 1871. But it was also due to the fact that Dreyfus was from Alsace, and Jewish – at a time when a virulent strain of antisemitism based on ‘scientific’ racism had emerged, and as antisemites of different political persuasions associated Jews with either socialism or capitalism. Read more | Fake news and Nazis: Richard J Evans on the spectre of conspiracies These motives also played on a deeper division that had riven French society since 1789. There were those who, like Dreyfus himself, embraced the principles of the Revolution and its legacy as embodied in the Third Republic, founded in 1870. These included secularism, parliamentary democracy, civil equality and a world view exulting in science and human reason. Adherents of this strong current within French political culture generally became ‘Dreyfusards’ who supported the officer’s innocence. Their opponents saw 1789 as a fatal breach with France’s true historical destiny: Catholic, hierarchical and monarchical. More recently, this traditional conservatism had been joined by a new form of rightwing ideology promising social reform but which was also nationalist, authoritarian, antisemitic. Many of those with such views became ‘anti-Dreyfusard’, opposed to revisiting the case. These flames were stoked by a virulently partisan newspaper press that played a pivotal role in the battle for public opinion. Print media had experienced a boom stimulated by more rapid communications, the introduction of photographs into newspapers, an expansion in advertising, and new forms of printing technology that made periodicals quicker and cheaper to produce and more widely available. At that time, France had a particularly vibrant press. Free, compulsory and universal primary education for boys and girls from the early 1880s encouraged literacy, and a press law enacted in 1881 lifted almost all restrictions on what could be published, although this was rolled back in 1893 and 1894 after a spate of anarchist bombings. Journalists and publishers could be sued for slander, but cases were rarely successful. Between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the number of periodical titles mushroomed by 250 per cent. These publications included broadsheets and tabloid newspapers representing the whole range of political opinions from the radical left to the extreme right. Yet within this vibrant ecosystem of print lurked a danger that remains familiar in our age of social media, online news and artificial intelligence. It was all too easy to spread what we now call ‘fake news’ – misinformation (falsehoods spread unintentionally), disinformation (fabrications aimed at manipulating readers politically and socially) and malinformation (deception based on some truth, but twisted in such a way as to deceive). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1404448124cmykWeb-Ready-a0c4306.jpg" width="2374" height="1582" alt="A black and white photograph of a man wearing military uniform, including a hat with "74" written on the front. He has a large, heavy moustache" title="Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, the officer who really wrote the treasonous memorandum attributed to Dreyfus. He was acquitted by a tribunal in 1898 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Fake news During the Dreyfus Affair, the newspaper press was infused with ‘fake news’. Not for the last time, the episode exposed the friction between free speech on the one hand and, on the other hand, the challenges that arise when people of bad faith abuse that freedom, spreading falsehoods to manipulate public opinion, demonise certain groups of people, or undermine faith in the rule of law and democratic government. The Dreyfus case sparked a truly explosive public controversy after Walsin Esterhazy was finally tried – and acquitted with unseemly haste – by a military court in January 1898. On 13 January, novelist Émile Zola published J’Accuse…!, an open letter to the president of the Republic, in L’Aurore newspaper. He accused the government and army of committing a gross injustice and of conspiring to cover up the truth. He specifically highlighted and decried the antisemitism, militarism and authoritarianism behind the falsehoods: “It is a crime to lead public opinion astray,” Zola wrote, “to manipulate it for a death-dealing purpose and pervert it to the point of delirium. It is a crime to poison the minds of the humble, ordinary people, to whip reactionary and intolerant passions into a frenzy while sheltering behind the odious bastion of antisemitism… It is a crime to play on patriotism to further the aims of hatred.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-90758187cmykWeb-Ready-51ffbc8.jpg" width="2642" height="1761" alt="A yellow newspaper page with the headline "J'accuse!" written across the top" title="Émile Zola’s open letter to the president of the Republic, accusing the army and government of a cover-up in the Dreyfus Affair, exposed deep rifts in French society (Image by Getty Images)" /> Following Zola’s outburst, the Dreyfus Affair erupted into a full-scale public storm. Except on rare occasions, newspapers tended to reinforce the beliefs of their readership rather than challenge them with facts. Giving readers what they wanted to hear was partly driven by economics: the conservative Le Figaro, for example, had stopped publishing Zola’s articles towards the end of 1897 after he openly embraced the Dreyfusard cause, which hurt sales of the newspaper. Yet much of the fake news had an even more insidious purpose. Anti-Dreyfusard papers fuelled nationalist prejudices by targeting Jews; claimed to be defending the ‘honour’ of the army; and railed against the ‘unpatriotic’ manoeuvres of the Dreyfusards – all as a means of galvanising support for the assorted authoritarians, monarchists, nationalists and antisemites who loathed the Republic. It was not that the Dreyfusards were innocent of spreading fake news. Although much of what Zola wrote in J’Accuse…! turned out to be accurate, he did not get everything right, as he himself appeared to admit when he finished by saying that he would willingly submit to prosecution for defamation under the 1881 Press Law. Zola did, in fact, face prosecution in 1898, avoiding imprisonment only by slipping away in June to England and living there in exile for a year. Read more | “A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history Even some leftwing Dreyfusard newspapers tended to casually use the antisemitic trope of the Jew as capitalist to explain popular hostility against Jews. Anti-Dreyfusard publications saw Jews, socialists and leftwing republicans as a ‘Syndicate of Treason’ (as the vitriolic journalist Henri Rochefort put it). However, the Dreyfusard press was prone to sharing conspiracy theories of its own, seeing its opponents as part of an interwoven plot involving the Catholic church and the nationalists, aiming to destroy the Republic and the inheritance of 1789. Yet the anti-Dreyfusard press had most of the running: of the 55 dailies published at the time, only eight came out as Dreyfusard from February 1898, almost all of them with relatively low circulation numbers. The media was dominated by anti-Dreyfusard titles, which had an almost open field in which to bombard readers with a swirl of half-truths and outright lies, stoking prejudices and stirring up fears. Forgiveable forgery One of the most egregious moments came in the wake of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry’s death. After his colleague, Picquart, had exposed Esterhazy as the real traitor in 1896, Henry had tried to bolster the case against Dreyfus by forging a letter that ‘proved’ his guilt, introducing it into the dossier of evidence. The ruse was successful until, as the pressure mounted over the course of 1898, the government investigated and discovered that forgery, leading to Henry’s arrest and suicide. For anti-Dreyfusard journalists, Henry’s crime was forgiveable: it was ‘patriotic’ because it served a higher cause – the security of the nation. Dreyfus was guilty anyway, they claimed; and even if he were innocent, those who sought to clear his name were traitors working for Germany. The virulently nationalist La Patrie accused Zola of doing untold harm to the army: “And since that day, the damage has surged in like a torrent, roared like a tempest. Who has not recognised in this tactic the workings of Bismarckian [ie German] politics?” The idea that Henry was a martyr to the cause of patriotism gained traction when the explicitly and graphically antisemitic La Libre Parole opened a subscription for the Lieutenant-Colonel’s widow, Berthe, which received no fewer than 25,000 donations. The newspaper published the many antisemitic and anti-republican messages sent along with the money. La Libre Parole means ‘Free Speech’, making it a case study for how prejudice and anti-democratic forces cloak themselves in the very freedoms that they seek to destroy or to deny to others. The Dreyfus case was – rightly or wrongly – seen as connected with both national security and the country’s future, so both sides entrenched themselves deeply within their positions. The more that the problems with Dreyfus’s conviction trickled out, the more the anti-Dreyfusards reinvigorated strategies that rested less on facts than on what is today called ‘gaslighting’ and on deflection, both of which involved stoking prejudices and demeaning opponents. Gaslighting, by which the perpetrator seeks to cast doubt on the truth, was deployed by Édouard Drumont, editor of La Libre Parole, who in June 1898 assured his readers that Dreyfusards were merely “a clutch of cosmopolitans who always talk of pieces of paper and documents but never prove anything” – the term ‘cosmopolitan’ being a dog-whistle term denoting unpatriotic or Jewish people. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/RV185-14cmykWeb-Ready-bfe91fd.jpg" width="2464" height="1643" alt="The top image shows a man in a suit with a moustache sitting at a desk and looking to the right. The bottom image shows a bearded man wearing glasses attached to a string, looking directly into the camera" title="Nationalist writer Maurice Barrès (top) entreated readers to consider national security above the facts of the miscarriage of justice, in contrast with the moral arguments of Dreyfusard Émile Zola (Images by TopFoto and Getty Images)" /> Nationalist writer Maurice Barrès made a more sophisticated use of gaslighting. Nothing in the Dreyfus Affair was demonstrably true, he argued in Le Journal in February 1898, so “how do you intend… to undertake to solve the problem when you do not have all the data?” he demanded of the Dreyfusards. Barrès’ purpose was to cast doubt on the significance of the few facts that were, at that point, already public knowledge. He took this further by suggesting that there are some truths that are “foreign to individual reason”, and that national circumstances and interests were the true barometer of what was just and true. “It is necessary to judge things in the relative,” Barrès argued, opening the way for his readership to be secure in their prejudices – because for them the army’s honour and national security were more important than the facts of any miscarriage of justice. Anti-Dreyfusard newspapers tried in various ways to deflect their readers’ attention away from the question of the convicted man’s innocence and onto other targets. This was a strategy behind the argument that Henry’s forgery was ‘patriotic’: his crime was minor compared to the real danger, which would be the victory of the Dreyfusards, who were no better than traitors. La Patrie proclaimed in September 1898: “Let us leave those cosmopolitans from Frankfurt to howl with joy over the tomb of that modest child of French soil [Henry]… Let us turn away with disgust from the spectacle of the odious triumph of the worst enemies of the army and of the country.” In that one sentence, the newspaper connected the Dreyfusards with treason, with Germany and Jews (‘cosmopolitans’), and with the ignominy of defeat – ‘Frankfurt’ being a reference to the humiliating peace treaty with Germany at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Demeaning caricatures At the same time, the anti-Dreyfusard press demeaned their opponents, caricaturing them as effeminate wimps, sexually sterile and highly strung, and contrasted them with the muscular, virile masculinity of the army officers whom they were accused of attacking. Zola was frequently depicted with simian characteristics: hairy, fat, thick-lipped. Dreyfus and other Jewish figures were ascribed the whole range of antisemitic tropes. La Libre Parole compared the ‘French’ femininity of Henry’s widow, Berthe, with the Jewish Dreyfusard Joseph Reinach, who was “puffy, swarthy, sweaty, stomach bulging”. For some, it did not even matter that Dreyfus was innocent: he was Jewish, so for the nationalists the greater ‘truth’ was that he could never be French. The process of gaslighting and deflection combined to stoke prejudices and popular fears, fogging out the original question of Dreyfus’s innocence. Read more | How Napoleon (almost) destroyed the French Revolution Yet a denouement was eventually reached. In February 1899, President Félix Faure – who opposed reopening Dreyfus’s case – died of a brain haemorrhage. He was succeeded by a Dreyfusard, Émile Loubet, whose election by parliament prompted an unsuccessful coup attempt by the Ligue des Patriotes and the Ligue antisémitique, who provided the street muscle of the anti-Dreyfusard movement. In June, the appeals court quashed Dreyfus’s conviction and ordered a retrial, which took place in August and September 1899 in Rennes – Paris being deemed too dangerous. Shockingly, the military tribunal again found the captain guilty. President Loubet issued a formal pardon, but Dreyfus was not officially cleared until 1906. He returned to the army, serving with merit in the First World War. The Dreyfus Affair showed how, when the stakes were high and when divisions ran deep, a torrent of half-truths, lies, deflection, the stoking of fear and prejudices, and appeals to ‘patriotism’ made it difficult for citizens to make informed decisions. It also demonstrated that many citizens were content to have their prejudices reaffirmed rather than critically examined. This is why Barrès’ argument that the nation had needs that were above reason and truth was so corrosive to democratic politics. The principle that truth, justice and legality could be judged only according to national interests allowed readers to indulge in a kind of relativism that justified falsehoods and injustice in pursuit of a conception of France that excluded groups who were the bogeymen of the nationalist right: Jews, foreigners, Protestants, Freemasons, socialists and others. It also exposed the spiky question that every democracy faces when freedom of expression becomes a means of undermining confidence and trust in its institutions: how to defend itself without infringing the very liberties that are its essence. Ultimately, the lesson of the Dreyfus Affair is that, in an age of mass media, citizens not only need to be equipped to make the honest effort to assess critically their sources of information and to examine their positions with verifiable evidence: they have to be willing to do so. In December 1898, L’Aurore understood that this was essential to the survival of democracy: “It is for citizens to inform themselves, to think, to use their will; it is for them to reform their morals, to no longer let themselves be taken for fools or as things to be juggled with and to emancipate themselves, not by force, but by ideas.” We need, the newspaper concluded, to “enlighten [our] brains, not slice them open!” Mike Rapport is reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Did Hitler have a secret Jewish grandfather? Our DNA research has solved the mystery
Geneticist Turi King and historian Alex J Kay are in the spotlight after their research into Hitler’s DNA was featured in a new Channel 4 series. Shortly after the first episode aired, Matt Elton spoke to them about the complex ethical dimensions of this work and some of the stunning revelations that have emerged from it
Matt Elton, HistoryExtra: How did you get involved in this project and did you have any concerns? Alex J Kay: I got involved in the project in March 2023. I was contacted by Dan Chambers from Blink Films, who had already been working on this project for quite some time. I knew that Turi was already involved and they were looking for a lead historian for the programme. My big concern – because there’s so much out there about Hitler, so many documentaries, so many studies, so many books – was that this was going to be done in a serious way. Not sensationally, but really following the science, and very much based on research and evidence. Everybody who was involved with the project was clearly following science and really wanted to do a good job, and make sure it was as ironclad as possible in terms of the research and the evidence, so that reassured me. Turi King: I was brought on almost exactly four years ago. My first question was around not wanting to be involved if this was going to be done in a sensationalist way. And I did agonise [over doing it] because of who it is. But then, as an ancient DNA specialist, there have been thousands of individuals, archaeological and historical specimens, who have had their whole genome sequenced – including Beethoven. And I was thinking: “Well, why should Hitler be seen as this kind of mystical figure whom we could never do this DNA analysis on? And who is it who makes those kinds of decisions?” As Alex has said, Hitler has been the subject of so many books and articles and television programmes and so on, but this would add a new layer of information that hasn’t been available before. The other thing was that, because the swatch [a small sample of material] was being made available for DNA analysis, somebody was going to do this at some point, so let’s make sure it’s done in an absolutely rigorous way. My first question was: “Is this actually Hitler’s DNA?” My first role in this was to go through the entire process around authenticating the DNA. So let’s talk about the swatch you mentioned there. Alex, can you talk about the final days of Hitler’s life and how they enabled the specific set of circumstances that allowed this research to happen? AJK: Hitler spent the last weeks of his life in his Berlin bunker virtually the entire time, only occasionally going up into the garden of the Reich Chancellery building. By [April] the Soviets were attacking the city. The Red Army had already entered Berlin and was fighting its way to the city centre, where the government headquarters were and where Nazi power was based – and of course Hitler’s bunker as well. At some point, Hitler realised the war was definitively lost and the Soviets would reach him within a matter of days. He took the decision to take his own life, which we know from eyewitness accounts he did by shooting himself, in his study on the now notorious sofa. It’s from this sofa that the piece of fabric was taken with the blood sample. Who took the sample from the sofa? And why? TK: So this was Colonel Roswell P Rosengren, who was a public information officer for Eisenhower during the war. The Red Army was in charge and apparently very few people were allowed to go into the bunker, but he was one of them. This was where Hitler had killed himself – so they got into the bunker and essentially started taking souvenirs. Rosengren cut a sample out of the sofa and took a swatch away – which, rather crucially, had blood on it from where Hitler killed himself. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/15-COL.-ROSWELL-P.-ROSENGREN-Credit-Erik-Rosengren--cdabc52.jpeg" width="4688" height="5800" alt="Colonel Roswell P Rosengren, who entered the Führerbunker after Hitler’s death, and cut out the sofa sample that would go on to be used to test his DNA (Image by Erik Rosengren)" title="Colonel Roswell P Rosengren, who entered the Führerbunker after Hitler’s death, and cut out the sofa sample that would go on to be used to test his DNA (Image by Erik Rosengren)" /> Did he have any idea that it was likely to be Hitler’s blood? TK: You would have to ask his family, but my understanding is that yes [he did]. The swatch was then brought back to the US and kept in the family for several decades. It was then passed down to his son, whom I had the pleasure of talking to, and who knew the entire story about how it had been brought into the family. Then, [in 2014] it was sold to the Gettysburg Museum of History. It was the museum that had been offering it for DNA analysis. Why has all this happened now given that that sample was in this museum all this time? TK: I think part of it [is a result of] genetic technology and what’s become available over the past 10–20 years. We are now able to do more and more in terms of sequencing. The field of ancient and historical DNA has really taken off, and we now have the ability to do this sort of work, which is why everything’s come together to make this happen. Read more | “We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp” There were multiple objections from European institutions because they were uncomfortable with testing Hitler’s DNA. Did that cause you any concerns? TK: Certain labs would have a think about it. They might go to their boards and they would say, “No, we don’t feel comfortable with doing this.” I’m Canadian and I have a lot of colleagues in the US, and I think for us the shadow of Hitler doesn’t feel as close as it must do to people here. That’s to do with geographical distance. In the end, the two labs that did the sequencing – because you want the sequencing done in two separate labs to make sure you’re getting the same results in both labs – are both in the US, where the sample is. AJK: I wasn’t entirely surprised when I was told that a number of European labs had decided not to get involved. I’m based in Germany, and there is a lot of awareness of the long shadow that Hitler still casts here, even 80 years after his death. There’s a great reluctance to get involved with anything that could be used for sensationalist purposes or where somebody could distort the facts. TK: One of the things that’s been really difficult about this project is trying to work to get an academic paper and the documentary to go out at the same time. It’s something over which I have no control, but there is an academic paper that I’m hoping will be able to come out in the next few weeks. That was one of the other things that I said when I first got involved: that there had to be an academic paper as well, it couldn’t just be a documentary. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/12-Taking-of-Sample-Credit-Blink-Films--08cb285.jpg" width="1915" height="815" alt="A pair of hands in purple gloves hold two small tools and work on a ripped cloth sample on a table" title="The sofa sample is tested in a lab. Alex J Kay and Turi King were both keen that this investigation was rigorous and not sensationalist. “There had to be an academic paper as well, it couldn’t just be a documentary”, says Turi (Image by Blink Films)" /> How did you determine whether the sample that was taken stood up to scrutiny? TK: This is where I always say it’s incredibly important that you don’t just use genetic data on its own, you link it with the historical information. My first question was, “What’s the provenance of this sample?” And actually, if you have a look at the photos of the sofa from the time period and then you look at the swatch, there’s a very distinctive pattern and those match. So that’s another tick we could put into the box. The other thing we could then do is genetic analysis. But there were no very close relatives that you could use for doing DNA testing and comparing against, such as you would do in a forensic case – a parent or a sibling or a child. They don’t exist because Hitler didn’t have any children. There are no close relatives who are alive today. This is where I got interested in a piece of DNA known as the Y chromosome, a segment of DNA that’s just passed down through the male line. So if there’s a male-line relative of Hitler, then you can look at the Y chromosome that’s coming back from the DNA, from the blood, and see if that matches a male-line relative. There was a study that had been done by Jean-Paul Mulders and Marc Vermeeren. They had tracked down quite distant members of the Hitler family, male-line members, including one who had given a DNA sample. The data from that was made available. We could then do an analysis of the Y chromosome and there was a perfect match between them. The next thing you have to ask as a geneticist is, “Okay, but how common is this Y chromosome type?” And, actually, it’s incredibly rare, not found in the Y chromosome forensic database. Even then, because we were being careful as we went, we wanted to know how common it is in Europe, let alone worldwide. There were no hits, so we could therefore say: “Yes, it’s a rare Y chromosome type.” And then we had to ask: “What is the likelihood that a close male-line relative of Hitler would have managed to get himself into the bunker, over to that sofa and bleed on it?” This is where Alex is great because I can turn to him and ask: “So what do we know about close male line relatives?” Once we can rule out all of these possibilities, it becomes vanishingly unlikely that this is not Hitler’s DNA. AJK: Hitler had very few close male-line relatives. He had no surviving brothers, for example, and lost four of his five siblings during his childhood. The only other surviving child was his sister, Paula. He did have a half-brother from his father’s previous marriage. However, I was able to determine that his half-brother at the end of the war was in Hamburg, not Berlin, so that ruled him out. This half-brother had two sons. One of those sons, however, had been killed in combat during the Second World War. So he was no longer alive in 1945, and the other son had actually emigrated and wasn’t even in the country. So we were able to rule out in this way that any other close male relative of Hitler’s could have been anywhere near the bunker in April 1945. Read more | “We need to understand the Nazis as human beings”: Richard J Evans on the motivations of Hitler’s followers Once you had started to become convinced that this might actually be Hitler’s DNA, what did that feel like? TK: That was a bit of a moment because you can go: “Okay, great, we can be confident that we’ve got Hitler’s DNA.” The next stage then is to do the whole genome sequencing. But the thing about that was we genuinely had no idea what we would find. As a geneticist, you think: “Well, possibly he has a very boring genome where he has a slight genetic predisposition towards something like coronary heart disease.” We didn’t know at all what we were going to find. Just before we get into what you found, what happened to Hitler’s body? AJK: Hitler’s body was burnt. He gave very explicit instructions to some of his members of staff who were still in the bunker for his body to be doused in petrol and burnt so that no remains were left. Hitler was very concerned that he would fall into the hands of the Soviets, dead or alive. Stories had been told to him about Mussolini’s death. Mussolini had been killed by Italian partisans and his corpse had then been strung up in a city square and abused by people – spat on and hit. Hitler wanted to avoid this demeaning fate, so he gave his members of staff in the bunker explicit instructions to get rid of his body, to destroy it completely. This didn’t happen: there were attempts made and the body was partially burnt, but not completely. Some bones did survive and the Soviets had access to those, but there was no body to speak of. How big a factor is the degradation that happens to a sample such as this over time, and does it affect the validity of the results in any way? TK: That’s a good question. One of the things I was actually looking [into] as part of the authentication processes was whether the DNA looks like it’s degraded. If it was a hoax, first of all, you wouldn’t get a DNA match but, secondly, the DNA would look quite different. While we’re alive we actually have really lovely long strands of DNA. And we do have things that come along and ‘nick’ it, but our body has mechanisms for fixing those DNA strands back together again. After death, that doesn’t happen. The DNA ends up in shorter and shorter strands, until there’s nothing left to sequence and the DNA is quite damaged. People often have this idea that there is a time factor in terms of how long it would be that we are able to obtain DNA. It’s actually time, but also the conditions under which the sample has been kept. Cold and dry is best for preserving DNA, which is why you can have some samples that are only a few years old but, if they’ve been kept in warm and damp conditions, you can’t get DNA out of them. But with other samples, people have managed to get nearly 2 million-year-old DNA out of permafrost. It was one of those things that, until we started the project and started having a look, we didn’t know quite whether or not the sample would be usable. The DNA is degraded, as would be expected, but we’ve got enough sequencing from two separate labs to get enough ‘coverage’ of the genome so that we can have a look at it. There are still gaps, but there’s enough that we can still do the analysis that we’ve been doing. A key thing is that, when we started this project, it was very important to say – and still to say – that nothing that we could ever find in Hitler’s DNA would excuse what he did. If I can get that message across, I think that’s super-important because no matter what we found, it doesn’t excuse what Hitler did in his lifetime. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-2696366-e250414.jpg" width="2766" height="3910" alt="Corporal Adolf Hitler (right) in a military hospital during WW1. “We’ve got to keep in mind that genetics is only one small piece of the puzzle,” says Alex J Kay. “Hitler was very much a product of his times”" title="Corporal Adolf Hitler (right) in a military hospital during WW1. “We’ve got to keep in mind that genetics is only one small piece of the puzzle,” says Alex J Kay. “Hitler was very much a product of his times”" /> AJK: We’ve got to keep in mind that genetics, as Turi has just said, is only one small piece of the puzzle. Hitler was very much a product of his times, of the First World War and postwar revolution in Germany. He was a product of a particular political radicalisation that took place in Germany in the 1920s. He was also the product of a traumatic childhood, losing four of his five siblings and both his parents by the age of 19. We have to keep in mind all of these factors when trying to understand the man Hitler became, and how it was possible for him to do what he did – and also in assessing how important these genetic findings are in the bigger picture. We’ve also got to emphasise that Hitler was a central figure in what then happened in the Second World War, and in the Holocaust, but he was only one man. There were hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian perpetrators [and other collaborators] who committed the most horrific crimes. There were many millions of people who followed Hitler and profited from the Nazi regime. We can’t explain what happened just by looking at Hitler and certainly not just by looking at Hitler’s genes. Read more | The final mystery of Richard III: how 21st-century science cracked a 500-year-old cold case One of the claims the programme specifically debunks is the idea that Hitler might have had Jewish heritage. How did you go into looking into this and how specifically did you debunk it? TK: I’m going to let Alex talk about the history here, but I can give you the genetics. So essentially my understanding is that there were queries about who Hitler’s paternal grandfather was. The story is that Hitler’s paternal grandfather wasn’t actually from the Hitler family and might have been Jewish because Hitler’s paternal grandmother was working in the house of a Jewish family at the time. The fact that we have a Y chromosome match between the blood and a distant male-line member of the Hitler family shows that Hitler’s grandfather was indeed from the Hitler family. AJK: Rumours that Hitler might have had some Jewish ancestry have been around for the best part of a century. They were already circulating in the 1920s. Some people believed that his paternal grandmother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, who had worked for a period of time in a Jewish household, had become pregnant as a result of that. The foreign press got hold of these rumours and made a lot out of them. It’s very important that we’ve been able to debunk that, because this has been something that both scholars and the general public alike have been very interested in – understandably, because of Hitler’s rabid antisemitism and his crucial role in the extermination of 6 million European Jews. There’s no truth in the rumours. Hitler did not have Jewish ancestry. Work also began on sequencing the entire genome of Hitler’s DNA. Before we talk about the potential this has for revealing new information about Hitler’s health, where do we need to be cautious when we’re talking about this kind of research? TK: I think a genetics lesson here is important because, when you’re looking for a genetic predisposition towards particular health conditions, there are two types of health condition that you can look at. There are particular health conditions where we know it goes back to a single gene, so if something is wrong with a particular gene, you will develop this condition. And then there are other conditions where we know it’s both polygenic, meaning many genes, and also multifactorial. So genetics is just a component of the condition, but there are all kinds of other factors that are involved. You could be genetically predisposed towards heart disease, for example. If you are being healthy, eating well and exercising, you’re less likely to go on to develop this than if you are sedentary, and you’re sitting on the sofa and you’re eating doughnuts all day. With things like smoking, chemical factors come into it, too, and we know that smoking makes you more likely to develop lung cancer, for example. So when we were looking at these two particular types of conditions, what we were doing with Hitler’s DNA was, firstly, running it through standard NHS ‘pipelines’. But also, because there have been so many medical biographers over the past [few] years and also during his lifetime who had suggested particular conditions, we did send the DNA to experts in particular fields to ask “Is there anything here that stands out to you?” This is where colleagues at the Pasteur Institute found there’s a deletion [a type of mutation where a part of a chromosome or a segment of DNA is lost] in a gene known as PROK 2, which is strongly associated with Kallmann syndrome, which has implications for testosterone levels and the development of sexual organs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/09-DNA-structure-Credit-Blink-Films-ca2cd88.jpg" width="1860" height="818" alt="The structure of a DNA strand. Expert testing shows that Hitler had a PROK 2 deletion, strongly associated with Kallmann syndrome (Image by Blink Films)" title="The structure of a DNA strand. Expert testing shows that Hitler had a PROK 2 deletion, strongly associated with Kallmann syndrome (Image by Blink Films)" /> We also found that Hitler was in the top 1 per cent for polygenic scores for schizophrenia, bipolar and autism. It’s probably a good idea that I give a quick explanation about how polygenic scores work. So this is where geneticists say: “Right, we’ve got all of these people over here with this particular condition. What are the genetic variants that they seem to have in common with one another that these people over here without the condition don’t seem to have, or have at much lower frequencies?” What you can then do is take somebody’s DNA and ask: “Well, where do they sit on this particular distribution?” This was work done by the IPSYCH team in Denmark. And this is where Hitler came in as being in the top 1 per cent for these three particular conditions – and that is incredibly rare. This is one of the areas in which the documentary enters into territory where we need to be careful about what we’re talking about. Did either of you have concerns about making connections between Hitler and specific conditions, however delicately phrased and couched? TK: That’s really important. In the documentary, what we do is we put all of the caveats in: we do talk about how this is not diagnostic just because he’s getting these scores. It is talking about a genetic predisposition, and you can’t run a straight line from this particular polygenic score to him being diagnosed with this particular condition. The other thing that’s very important to say is that it’s incredibly rare for people with these conditions to go on to commit violent acts, let alone genocide. They’re more likely to be on the receiving end of violence. And as Alex was saying, Hitler was not active on his own. There were hundreds of thousands of people who were helping him. They’re not all going to have the same genetic makeup as one another. These caveats are really important to put out there. In the documentary, we’re clear we cannot say that he had any of these particular conditions, but there is a genetic predisposition towards them. AJK: As a historian, I would say we have to approach this research like we would approach any other historical source, namely with care. We have to double-check it. We have to compare it against other sources of information, other evidence that we have, other things that we know. That would be the first step in any approach in dealing with this. And in this case, as Turi has already wonderfully explained, this is an indication of predisposition. We do not know whether Hitler had any of these conditions. And therefore for me, the finding, while fascinating, is less important than the findings on potential Jewish ancestry – because we now know something definite, whereas with the polygenic scores the findings are merely an indication. I do think it’s striking, as Turi has said, that Hitler had this top 1 per cent predisposition in all three of these categories, but we’re not saying, “Oh, look, Hitler might have had one of these conditions” – it’s actually that he’s in the top 1 per cent for all three. Potentially, this kind of explosive mix makes it quite a quite remarkable finding, but it’s not proof of anything yet because it’s just an indication. I would also say that we’re talking a lot about what responsibilities the makers of the programme have and the people involved in it. Both Turi and I, and everybody else involved in the programme, take these responsibilities very seriously. I also think, by the same token, that anybody watching this documentary and then commenting on it, particularly journalists reporting on it, equally has a responsibility to report on it in a serious way and to place it in context – not to emphasise one particular aspect to the exclusion of everything else, not to remove all the caveats that we have put in. That responsibility works both ways. During the media frenzy of the past few days, and when some journalists have emphasised certain findings of the programme or certain indications in the programme to the exclusion of others, or when people have talked about the risk of stigmatisation, I have asked myself: “Would some people have preferred us not to reveal certain findings, just to reveal some findings but hold back other findings?” Surely, if we’d done that and it had come out at some point in the future, that would’ve been a good reason to reproach us? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/14-Hitler-Credit-BAYERISCHE-STAATSBIBLIOTHEK-8fabb60.jpg" width="3998" height="2641" alt="Hitler, dressed in a long overcoat and a cap, looks out over the sea" title="The DNA testing revealed that “there is a genetic predisposition towards” Hitler having schizophrenia, bipolar and autism, but there can be no direct diagnoses from these findings (Image by BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK)" /> TK: Just to echo what Alex has said, it’s been really interesting to see how some of the journalism has gone. You know, they haven’t bothered to take on board everything that Alex and I talk about, about how it’s so important that you take this in the context of what we know about DNA and in the context of the historical setting for all of this. And also to echo that our role is to lay out what we have found, and to put in all of the caveats about what we can and cannot say. But again, as Alex was saying, if we held back information, that would be seen as kind of gatekeeping and elitist, and I would not feel comfortable with that. I think it would be inappropriate to withhold information. Among the research findings is the fact that Hitler’s DNA bears evidence of a genetic mutation that in some cases can result in abnormalities, including a micro-penis. Lots of the more salacious reporting has focused on this. Given that, do you have any regrets about its inclusion and the fact it’s overshadowed the rest of the research? TK: In the documentary and in the academic paper, we talk about how the DNA cannot tell us what Hitler’s genitalia looked like. All we can do is report that [a micropenis] is known to be strongly associated with Kallmann syndrome. He will have had some form of Kallmann syndrome. These are various phenotypes, or ways in which the condition manifests itself in somebody. All we can do, again, is put the caveats in. And this is where Alex’s work is really important, because there are historical documents around what we already know about Hitler’s genitalia. It’s when you put the genetics and the history together that you get a better understanding of all this. Read more | Simon Schama on British history if Hitler had beaten Churchill: "The Holocaust would have happened here" AJK: It was slightly predictable, the way that some newspapers and some media outlets have reported on this. For me, it’s not particularly interesting what Hitler’s genitalia looked like. What is interesting is the discovery that he had Kallmann syndrome, which is a genetic disorder. It actually explains a lot about Hitler’s private life – or, more accurately, his lack of a private life, because Kallmann is associated with low testosterone levels, low sex drive, and it impacts on the development of the reproductive features and the reproductive functions. It tells us a lot about how Hitler [might have] felt about intimate relationships, how he felt about himself, his level of self-consciousness, and thereby goes some way to explaining why he devoted himself completely to politics, to the exclusion of any kind of private life or relationships. Hitler is obviously not the only political figure to have foregone intimate relationships or sexual relationships or romantic relationships. But if we compare him to all the other leading Nazi figures, he is the outlier. All the other senior Nazis had wives, had children, often had extramarital affairs. So Hitler is unique in that respect and historians have puzzled over why this was for a long time. And I think this finding of Kallmann syndrome is really very significant and striking because it adds that final piece of the puzzle in explaining why Hitler basically didn’t have a private life. So as a historian, you do think there are real findings here that help explain Hitler’s personality and even his actions? AJK: Absolutely. Now they don’t explain all of his actions by any stretch. We talked earlier about environmental and social factors, the context of the times in which Hitler lived and his childhood experiences. All of those factors are equally, if not more, important than any genetic findings. However, these genetic findings contribute to our understanding of Hitler and why he behaved in certain ways. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-514704098-6f0fed0.jpg" width="3164" height="2641" alt="A black and white photo of a group of men in Nazi uniform walking down a set of steps. In the centre of the image is a young woman in a long black coat with 8 buttons down the front" title="Adolf Hitler pictured with Eva Braun, whom he met in 1929. Eyewitness testimony suggests the couple’s relationship was platonic, says Alex J Kay (Image by Getty Images)" /> Hitler did have a relationship with Eva Braun. Do the findings shed any new light on that particular relationship? AJK: Not specifically about that relationship as such, but it tallies with what we know about that relationship. Everything we know suggests that Hitler and Eva Braun were companions as much as anything else. We have numerous eyewitness statements from people who were close to them, from people who spent a lot of time with them. Hitler’s caretaker of eight years at the Berghof, his mountain retreat, Herbert Döhring, said there was never any evidence that Hitler and Eva Braun had sex. Christa Schroeder was one of Hitler’s secretaries for 12 years. She said exactly the same. Heinrich Hoffmann, who was the photographer who introduced Hitler and Eva Braun in the first place, said their relationship was always platonic. We also know they didn’t share a bedroom, either at the Berghof, in Hitler’s bunker in the final weeks of the war, or in Hitler’s suite of rooms at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. They always had separate rooms, so everything points to this having been a platonic relationship and not a sexual relationship. One of the experts featured in the documentary is Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, who’s director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. He says: “The experience of neglect and abuse” – which you have talked about, Alex, in Hitler’s childhood – “is much more relevant to understanding why someone grows up with hate and anger rather than the genetics – the two interplay.” I wondered if either of you had anything you’d like to add to that? TK: As a geneticist, I’m the first person to say that genetics is just a part of the puzzle of who somebody is. This is where, again, it’s marrying genetics up with the history when we talk about what appears to be a genetic predisposition. We’ve got to set that really in the context of who was this individual? How did he grow up? What was the time that he was growing up in? The genetics is only going to give you a very small part of who somebody is and goes on to become. AJK: Simon Baron-Cohen is obviously in a much better position to comment on the relative importance or impact of genetics versus upbringing or childhood. However, I would be inclined overall to agree with him that environmental and social factors, particularly neglect and abuse during childhood, have a huge impact on the adult that a person becomes. And therefore, as I said earlier, these are at least as important as genetic factors – and I would be inclined to say more important. As we’ve been stressing, the genetics is only a part of the jigsaw puzzle, and doesn’t explain and cannot explain everything. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/17-Hitler-as-a-Child-Credit-NARA-c1e5ebb.jpg" width="1896" height="816" alt="A black and white photo of a young boy wearing a dark jacket and light shirt. He is looking seriously at the camera" title="Hitler as a child. It’s likely that abuse suffered by Hitler during his childhood greatly contributed to his character later in life (Image by NARA)" /> We are talking in the middle of a week where you’ve been at the centre of a media storm. Has the backlash in some quarters been along the lines of what you expected or has anything here come as a surprise? TK: I don’t want to speak for Alex, but we knew it was going to be controversial. For me, the most important thing to do is to say: “This is what the DNA can say, this is what the DNA cannot say.” We knew that some parts of the media were not going to listen to that, but all we can do as scientists is just keep the guardrails in about what we can and cannot say from somebody’s DNA. Again, it’s also placing all of this within the historical context. AJK: I think we did anticipate this would be big. This is a major project. It’s a world-first analysis of Hitler’s DNA, right? We all knew it would be controversial because of who this is. That’s perfectly understandable. I think we all also expected some dissenting voices. I personally have been a little surprised at just how huge it’s been and how global the response has been in the media. I wasn’t entirely expecting this magnitude of response. TK: I think it goes back to what Alex was saying about a responsibility in the media to report accurately. And while we knew that some people were not going to do this, in some ways the magnitude of how it’s been portrayed was something that I don’t think any of us were quite expecting. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/22-Hitler-General-Credit-BUNDESARCHIV-f932c12.jpg" width="1736" height="820" alt="A close up photograph of Hitler, with a short black moustache and a very serious expression on his face" title="According to Turi King, DNA testing like this provides “another layer of information” for historians to use to understand Hitler further (Image by BUNDESARCHIV)" /> What do you hope is the next stage for our understanding about Hitler and the period of history in which he was part? TK: From a geneticist’s point of view, we have done this analysis. I keep coming back to the guardrails about what DNA can and cannot say, and context. It’s another layer of information that historians such as Alex can draw on in terms of how they understand Hitler. AJK: I’m still trying to digest the reactions to this step in our attempts to understand Hitler. I think I say somewhere in the documentary that this will change the way we think about Hitler in the future and that we’ll be talking about it for a long time. I stand by that. I do think that it has added very significant new information and added a new layer of understanding. I don’t know if this is realistic, but I would actually hope that maybe in the future we can treat Hitler a little bit less like a mythical figure or a monster, although he was certainly guilty of monstrous acts, and instead try to understand how a human being can get to the point where they do this kind of thing. I’ve always been a little bit concerned when people dismiss Hitler and the Nazis as monsters, because if we dismiss somebody as a monster then we’re not obliged to explain them or understand how they could commit the acts they committed. But the scary fact of the matter is that Hitler was a human being and all of those hundreds of thousands of Nazi perpetrators who did monstrous, horrific things were human beings. So sadly, we need to understand how this was possible. Turi King is the lead geneticist on the research into Hitler’s DNA. Alex J Kay is a historian specialising in Nazi Germany. Their groundbreaking work is covered in the two-part Channel 4 and Blink Films documentary Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator
Best history books 2025: BBC History Magazine’s Books of the Year
In the roster of laudable history books published in 2025, authors tackled topics as diverse as Gaza, Indian partition, extinction, medieval and Stuart monarchs – even historians themselves. Here, a panel of experts recommend the titles they most enjoyed
Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War (Basic Books) Lyndal Roper Hannah Skoda: Did you know that Thomas Müntzer, leader of the German Peasants’ War in 1525, used a rainbow flag to rally his followers? It’s an aptly exuberant image for the radical charisma of Müntzer, and for the hope and vision of the peasants. Religious change seemed to open up new ways of thinking about oppression and exploitation for those rebellious upstarts. In Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (Basic Books), Lyndal Roper works with sources mostly hostile to the peasants, but the result reads with nuance and acuity. We get a real sense of ordinary people longing for justice and a fairer set of relations to the land, alongside the sheer terrors of this war, which was put down with great ferocity. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org A Short History of the Gaza Strip (Simon & Schuster) Anne Irfan Hannah Skoda: Anne Irfan’s A Short History of the Gaza Strip (Simon & Schuster) is a wonderfully informative account of the complexities of the situation. Beginning in 1948, she guides us through these tangled events with great clarity, drawing on a vast array of sources. The text is nuanced, humane and critical at a time when too many assumptions and untruths are floating around. It might helpfully be read alongside the new podcast series Empire: The History of Gaza, presented by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, which explores Gaza’s deep history stretching back more than 4,000 years. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Anne Sebba Hannah Skoda: The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), by Anne Sebba, is an intensely moving book. At one point, the women’s orchestra at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp was led by Alma Rosé, niece of Gustav Mahler and an extraordinary musician in her own right. This music-making saved the lives of around 40 of the orchestra’s members. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Impossible Bomb (Yale University Press) Gareth Williams Christopher Harding: A host of Second World War anniversaries this year highlighted the enormous part played in that conflict by new and ever more destructive technologies. Gareth Williams’ The Impossible Bomb (Yale University Press) opened my eyes to the role of British science in the development of nuclear weapons. He takes us from trepidation among scientists in the 1930s, through the breakthroughs and political machinations that shaped what came next. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan (Allen Lane) Richard Overy Christopher Harding: In Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan (Allen Lane), Richard Overy reminds us that incendiaries caused far greater destruction in Japan than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tested in the US on Japanese-style wooden architecture, they killed 100,000 people in Tokyo in a single night’s bombing in March 1945. Overy’s book includes an excellent discussion of the reasons behind the timing of Japan’s eventual surrender, cautioning us not to overestimate the role played by atomic weapons – the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, a day before Nagasaki, was also hugely significant. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Grave of the Fireflies (Penguin Classics) Akiyuki Nosaka Finally, one of Japan’s greatest war novels arrived in translation, highlighting the often overlooked cost to children of the Second World War. Akiyuki Nosaka’s Grave of the Fireflies (Penguin Classics) may already be familiar from Studio Ghibli’s animated adaptation of 1988 – undoubtedly the most harrowing film I’ve ever seen. Thanks to Ginny Tapley Takemori’s translation, English-speaking readers can now follow the lives of siblings and war orphans Seita and Setsuko as they are forced to navigate, largely alone, the darkness and chaos of Kobe after large parts of it are laid waste by firebombing. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org A History of England in 25 Poems (Allen Lane) Catherine Clarke Alice Loxton: In A History of England in 25 Poems (Allen Lane), Catherine Clarke roams from raging battlefields to royal courts, and darts from the Great Fire of London to the Miners’ Strike, on a literary tour through English history. We unpick the words of The Peterborough Chronicle, Thomas Wyatt, John Dryden and Lord Tennyson, to name just a few. It is a charming mix of history, travel and literature, inspiring the reader to set forth to discover the English countryside – and to reread the poems aloud at the sites that inspired their creation. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins) Sam Dalrymple Alice Loxton: Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins), Sam Dalrymple skilfully examines how the Indian empire – a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of south-east Asia – was divided into 12 separate nation states between 1931 and 1971. By dissecting this complex past, he shows how the map of modern Asia was made. It is a vast subject, but Dalrymple has achieved the perfect balance of academic excellence and brilliant storytelling. Kavita Puri: Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (William Collins) looks at the vast Indian empire and its break-up. As recently as 1928, it encompassed countries known today as India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Though the partition of 1947 is well known, the others are less familiar, yet Dalrymple explains how we continue to live with their ramifications and the empire’s legacy. This is an impressive, ambitious debut, deeply researched and with a storyteller’s eye for detail. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain (William Collins) Blessin Adams Alice Loxton: In Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain (William Collins), the historian and former police officer Blessin Adams unpicks the evidence relating to a succession of historical murders, trawling pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts littered with clickbait tales of traitorous wives, greedy mistresses, child killers and malicious witches. And she offers a compelling verdict: society was both repulsed by and attracted to this murderous female rebellion, and – as is so often the case when we interrogate the sources – the truth is far more complex than it first seems. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Allen Lane) Sadiah Qureshi Olivette Otele: Extinction, often linked to climate change, continues to be a hotly debated issue. Yet, as Sadiah Qureshi argues, it has been the result of political decisions made long before the heavy industrialisation of the 20th century. Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Allen Lane) examines the long history of extinction, from the dinosaurs to endangered species today. She demonstrates that the classification and hierarchisation that were at the heart of colonial projects extended to living beings. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Legenda: The Real Women Behind the Myths That Shaped Europe (WH Allen) Janina Ramirez Olivette Otele: The illusion that the world can be remoulded by human will becomes reality in Janina Ramirez’s outstanding Legenda: The Real Women Behind the Myths That Shaped Europe (WH Allen). This is not a mere retelling of well-known stories of medieval figures; instead, the author reclaims the narratives previously imposed on those women, unveiling their personal lives. This book disrupts established views on legendary women by uncovering the extent of their agency on their own lives and their influence on various kingdoms. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors (Trapeze) Paula Akpan Olivette Otele: Expanding on key figures who shaped women’s history, When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors (Trapeze) shifts our attention from Europe. Paula Akpan’s beautiful prose helps us navigate emotions provoked by these women’s little-known yet incredible trajectories, providing enlightening insights into power, diplomacy and war in African kingdoms. These female rulers had to fight for their people while navigating the treacherous waters of ancient civilisations’ polities. From Nigeria to South Africa, we learn that if greed and fear hinder progress, a leader’s faith in her abilities and in her community can bring great rewards. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Tunisgrad: Victory in Africa (William Collins) Saul David James Holland: Saul David is one of my favourite historians writing today, and his latest book, Tunisgrad: Victory in Africa (William Collins), is brilliant. The Tunisian campaign was a pivotal moment in the Second World War – a period when the Allies sussed out how to work together and to harness air, land and sea power effectively to beat the Axis. Saul’s new book is compellingly told and fills a big hole in the popular narrative of the war. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org 1945: The Reckoning (Hodder & Stoughton) Phil Craig James Holland: Phil Craig co-authored Finest Hour, a book about 1940 and the Battle of Britain published 26 years ago, which had a profound influence on me and my own writing. His new book, 1945: The Reckoning (Hodder & Stoughton), casts fresh light on not only the end of the fighting in the Second World War but also the changing world that emerged and the mayhem that followed, which was often disturbingly violent. Focusing on a number of fascinating individuals, Craig follows a range of unexpected and diverse characters. I never knew, for example, that the British actually used Japanese troops to quell insurrections in south-east Asia in late 1945. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee: An Epically Short History of Our Kings and Queens (Mudlark) Charlie Higson James Holland: Charlie Higson’s Willie, Harry, Stee: An Epically Short History of Our Kings and Queens (Mudlark) is the most enjoyable and utterly joyous account of our monarchs I’ve ever read. There’s no lack of research here, but he writes with terrific energy and verve, adding fabulously quirky observations and small details. The illustrations by Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) are superb – look at George V with his tattoos, for example. I can’t think of a better Christmas history book – one that I would so loved to have read as an impressionable teenager! Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan (Hutchinson Heinemann) Lyse Doucet Kavita Puri: Lyse Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan (Hutchinson Heinemann) recounts that country’s turbulent history over the past 50 years. Readers view it through the prism of the ‘Inter-Con’ hotel and the people who’ve worked there, including the first female chef, as well as the guests who pass through. It is a poignant and, at times, tragic history of ordinary lives set against the background of royal rule, coups d’état, foreign invasions and two Taliban regimes, the current iteration of which the UN has called a “gender apartheid” state. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Journeys of Empire: British Voyages that Changed the World Forever – and the Rebels Who Resisted (Puffin) Sathnam Sanghera <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/Books-328-Xmas25-Journeys-of-Empire-British-Voyages-that-Changed-the-World-Forever-e925524.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A blue book cover with a red and white title across the top. There is an illustration of a lion with a purple crown on its head and a map hanging from its mouth" title="Journeys of Empire: British Voyages that Changed the World Forever" /> Kavita Puri: How we teach history to the next generation is something I think about a lot. Sathnam Sanghera’s children’s book Journeys of Empire: British Voyages that Changed the World Forever – and the Rebels Who Resisted (Puffin) would make an excellent Christmas gift, guiding younger travellers to India in the company of royalty, and across the Atlantic with a young enslaved man. They will ascend mountains never before climbed, and visit places that the west never realised existed. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Heaven Does Not Block All Roads (Hurst) Anna Beth Keim Rana Mitter: The Forrest Gump of Asia? Not quite – but the life of Huang Chin-tao, as explored in Anna Beth Keim’s Heaven Does Not Block All Roads (Hurst), reflects many of the turning points in the modern history of one of the most controversial places on the continent: Taiwan. Huang was a soldier under Japanese occupation during the Second World War, a political prisoner for years under Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, then a fighter for democracy in what has now become perhaps Asia’s most liberal state. Using archives and interviews married with sparkling prose, Keim tells a compelling story of historical significance. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Party's Interests Come First (Stanford University Press) Joseph Torigian Rana Mitter: Another Asian life story to fascinate is that of Xi Zhongxun. A powerful figure in the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao, his son Xi Jinping now rules China. Joseph Torigian’s superb biography, The Party’s Interests Come First (Stanford University Press), reveals the deeply conflicted nature of the elder Xi: an ardent atheist revolutionary who developed a successful (at first) relationship with the Dalai Lama, and a reformist who was an unbending martinet at home. He was purged in 1962, sending his young son Jinping into exile – and helping shape the path of the 21st century. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org A Short History of Japan (Pelican) Christopher Harding Rana Mitter: Meanwhile, across the sea sits Japan. The perfect introduction to that intriguing society is Christopher Harding’s lively new A Short History of Japan (Pelican). Starting with prehistory, Harding explores the importance of Buddhism, the path to modernisation and, in particular, the role of cultural and material history, including the Japanese traditions of theatre and ceramics. The book is short, yes – but its scope is long, deep and rich. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org What Is Ancient History? (Princeton University Press) Walter Scheidel Josephine Quinn: As a harried academic whose only hobby is missing deadlines, I mostly end up reading books from last year, but sometimes a recent publication makes it to the top of my pile – or, even better, turns up as an advance proof. The best book that’s been published about my own field this year – indeed, for many years – is Walter Scheidel’s What Is Ancient History? (Princeton University Press). It’s a lot of fun, identifying the origins of the modern, idiosyncratic equation of antiquity with Greece and Rome in a dual 19th-century move towards scholarly specialisation or ‘dismemberment’ and away from notions of non-European ancestries. There’s a manifesto, too – not for a return to the past but for a new understanding of pre-modern history not simply as ‘ancient’ but as ‘foundational’ for the contemporary world, worth studying in its own right and on a global scale. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Augustine the African (Profile) Catherine Conybeare Josephine Quinn: Also among books within my field, I’d single out Catherine Conybeare’s Augustine the African (Profile). This short and readable biography explains the bishop of Hippo’s thinking in ways that even I could understand, and situates it, unusually, in his own local experiences growing up in north Africa and then, after a confusing period of travel in Italy as a young man, returning there for good. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea (Allen Lane) Fara Dabhoiwala Joesphine Quinn: Further out of my own comfort zone, I enjoyed Fara Dabhoiwala’s What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea (Allen Lane). I’d never known what to think about the political obsession with free speech on both left and right, so understanding the controversial origins of the concept was very helpful in forming a clearer – and more negative – view of my own. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers (Jonathan Cape) Helen Lewis Onyeka Nubia: The soul of a species is under scrutiny in The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers (Jonathan Cape), Helen Lewis’s dissection of human rebels. In it she offers a 21st-century decoding of an 18th-century notion of ‘eminent men’ – and it works. It works for ‘us’, because historical morality is revisionist. But enemies and heroes are socially constructed, and future generations will baulk, aghast at ‘our’ moral imperatives. Perhaps rebels seduce because they represent an alluring aspect of the human psyche. It could be argued human hegemony exists because of Homo sapiens’ capacity to bend the laws of nature. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Revolutionists (Bodley Head) Jason Burke Onyeka Nubia: Perhaps the idea of home-grown terrorists shocks the system because of manufactured prejudices about who such people are. European terrorism is sometimes offered as an aberration – a ‘rare’ phenomenon – an approach that has influenced portrayals of the Red Army Faction. In The Revolutionists (Bodley Head), Jason Burke defies this intellectual virtue-signalling of ‘western’ values, unpicking the Faction’s forcible entrance into European politics. He holds up a mirror to the Baader-Meinhof gang’s fears of a Fourth Reich – a fear that they felt could justify any action. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Between Two Rivers (Hodder Press) Moudhy Al-Rashid Onyeka Nubia: Moudhy Al-Rashid’s Between Two Rivers (Hodder Press) is a love letter to the Tigris and Euphrates. However, she carefully distances herself from environmental determinism, which may offer the ‘magic’ of civilisation as only a matter of geographical location, boldly and eloquently debunking an obsession with ‘eastern origins’ and orientalism. This is a fine read – historical non-fiction that flows like the best poetry. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain's First King (William Collins) Gareth Russell Tracy Borman: James VI & I was a contradictory, often misunderstood character. Only by shining a light on his private life do we glimpse the real man behind the regal mask. That is what Gareth Russell does in Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain’s First King (William Collins), told with the author’s characteristic verve and exquisite eye for detail – a stunning achievement and a must for history fans. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Queens at War: England's Medieval Queens (Jonathan Cape) Alison Weir Tracy Borman: Alison Weir’s Queens at War: England’s Medieval Queens (Jonathan Cape) is a gripping new account of England’s medieval queens that brings a dazzling cast of characters – from the formidable Margaret of Anjou to more shadowy figures such as Anne Neville, consort of Richard III – vividly to life. These are women who broke the mould, wielding power not just as the wives of kings but in their own right. In doing so, they shaped the course of English history. Britain’s bestselling female historian has a back catalogue most authors can only dream of, so the queens’ stories are in safe hands. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Women Who Ruled the World: 5,000 Years of Female Monarchy (Footnote Press) Elizabeth Norton Tracy Borman: Women Who Ruled the World: 5,000 Years of Female Monarchy (Footnote Press) by Elizabeth Norton is a gripping and beautifully crafted book that skilfully interweaves the stories of female rulers who, on the face of it, have little in common but their sex. As well as introducing the reader to lesser-known characters – Tamar of Georgia and Lili‘uokalani of Hawaii, for example – it provides a fresh perspective on famous figures such as Cleopatra and Elizabeth I. There is a striking contemporary resonance, making even the distant past seem within touching distance. This is a book that effortlessly encompasses a breathtaking span of time, geography and personalities. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso) Michael Braddick Richard J Evans: Biographies of historians aren’t always terribly interesting: we are a tribe that usually does little except sit in archives, libraries, seminar rooms and lecture halls. But sometimes you can find colleagues whose lives are more active and perhaps a bit more interesting than the run-of-the-mill. I certainly struck it lucky with Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012), whose personal archive included a vast mass of diaries, letters, manuscripts and much else besides, which I used for my 2019 biography. Two more lives have appeared this year that tell us a lot about the historical profession and its wider social and political context. Michael Braddick’s Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian (Verso) had to contend with its subject’s rather private nature. However, like Hobsbawm, Hill (1912–2003) was for years kept under surveillance by MI5, and maintained a voluminous correspondence. Braddick is himself a distinguished expert in Hill’s main field, 17th-century English history, and authoritatively assesses his subject’s contribution. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Indefatigable Asa Briggs (William Collins) Adam Sisman Richard J Evans: Asa Briggs (1921–2016) is the subject of another absorbing biography, The Indefatigable Asa Briggs (William Collins), written by Adam Sisman, author of previous lives of Alan Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. With classic works including Victorian People and The Age of Improvement, Briggs did more than anyone to rescue the Victorians from what another radical historian, Edward Thompson, called “the enormous condescension of posterity”. Both Hill and Briggs wrote gracefully and addressed themselves to a wide readership – an example to us all. Unlike Hobsbawm, however, both men took top managerial roles in higher education institutions – perhaps to the detriment of their actual historical work. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive (Hamish Hamilton) Mathelinda Nabugodi Leah Redmond Chang: There is something magical about handling objects in the archive: through them, the past just comes to life. But in Mathelinda Nabugodi’s expert hands, the relics of the 19th-century Romantic past take on startling new meanings. The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive (Hamish Hamilton) is a genre-defying book blending essay, memoir and keen historical analysis. Above all, it is a conversation between a historian and a sometimes hostile archive – a meditation on how history gets made, and by whom. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance Joe Dunthorne Leah Redmond Chang: Joe Dunthorne set out to write the story of his Jewish great-grandfather’s escape from Nazi Germany but, through persistent digging, discovered a story far more complex than the one he had imagined. Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance (Hamish Hamilton) begins as a personal memoir but unfurls into a much broader history, revealing how individual people and nations cling to certain stories for the sake of moving forward – often at a steep cost. It’s both a family tribute and a cautionary tale. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (Faber & Faber) Francesca Wade Leah Redmond Chang: Maybe, like me, you drifted in confusion through one of Gertrude Stein’s books at university, or vaguely recall her as the bossy salonnière in Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris. In her own time, though, she was a cutting-edge writer, a savvy patron of artists, a Jewish American who survived in the heart of Vichy France, and a woman devoted to her lover Alice B Toklas – who in turn fiercely protected Stein’s literary legacy after her death. Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife (Faber & Faber) is a fresh, intimate and deeply compelling portrait. Who would have thought that a biography of Gertrude Stein would keep me up late reading? But this is page-turning stuff. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Baltic: The Future of Europe (John Murray) Oliver Moody Peter Frankopan: I hugely enjoyed Oliver Moody’s Baltic: The Future of Europe (John Murray), a brilliant blend of history and reportage – as well as a primer for why this area is central to the world of tomorrow. Much of this region has spent time, energy and thought working out how to address disinformation, hybrid threats, defence readiness and institutional adaptability – and the book urges that others learn from these lessons, too. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World (Pushkin Press) Giuliano da Empoli Peter Frankopan: I was riveted by Giuliano da Empoli’s The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World (Pushkin Press), which assesses change in today’s world with terrifying clarity. As translated by Sam Taylor, Da Empoli has a wonderful turn of phrase and is an astute picker of historical parallels. Most of today’s leaders are like the Aztecs, he writes, unable to confront reality. Some, though, are like Cesare Borgia – men who believe that they can bend the world to their will and shape it in their own image. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Luke Pepera Peter Frankopan: Luke Pepera’s Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is another ambitious and expansive book by a first-time author. Pepera starts his investigation deep in the past, looking at themes ranging from migration to oral traditions, matriarchal societies to ancient empires. Blending history, anthropology and memoir, he restores agency and depth to the continent’s story, from chapters about ancient empires to oral traditions and modern diasporas. Rejecting colonial frames, he shows Africa not as a passive backdrop to global history but as one of its enduring creators and moral centres. Buy now on Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org These selections first appeared in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
After Franco: Spain's miraculous transition to democracy
The nation’s transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 1970s surely counts as one of modern Europe’s most remarkable stories. On the 50th anniversary of General Franco’s death, Paul Preston explores how pluralism arose from the ashes of tyranny
When General Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975 – 39 years after the start of the brutal civil war that brought him to power – the prospect of a bloodless transition to democracy in Spain appeared vanishingly small. Franco had prepared a rigid framework to guarantee the permanence of the dictatorship over which he had ruled with an iron fist for almost four decades. Spain teetered on the edge of bloodshed and chaos, with powerful groups at the political extremes ferociously opposed to compromise. And so, as El Caudillo (‘The Leader’) was buried in the vast Valley of the Fallen memorial just outside Madrid – acclaimed by tens of thousands of blue-shirted supporters – few commentators would have predicted a future of pluralism and relative peace. Yet that’s exactly what was achieved. That the Spanish people were, over the next 10 years, able to negotiate a perilous path towards democracy through the minefields laid by Franco himself – and the ambushes set by terrorists of both right and left – counts as an extraordinary achievement. Even from a distance of 50 years, it surely ranks among modern Europe’s most remarkable stories. So how did it happen? Blurring the past To answer that question we must rewind to the end of the Second World War. Terror had underpinned Franco’s regime from the moment he was propelled to power at the end of the 1930s. But defeat for the Axis powers in 1945 shattered his initial plans for a fascist future – one in which Europe was dominated by authoritarian regimes. Franco realised that he needed to end Spain’s international ostracism in the postwar period and be incorporated into the western community. To achieve that, a new approach was required. And so, to blur the Spanish dictator’s Axis past, a scheme was devised by his crony, naval captain Luis Carrero Blanco, to perpetuate the regime behind a monarchist facade. The Law of Succession of 26 July 1947 established Spain as a kingdom with Franco as its head of state. Franco would govern as regent until prevented by death or incapacity – and he had the right to nominate his own royal successor. The dictator didn’t name that successor immediately. In fact, it wasn’t until July 1969 that Franco announced to the world the identity of the man who would become head of state following his death. That man was Juan Carlos – grandson of Alfonso XIII, king of Spain from 1886 to 1931. This would not be a restoration of the legitimate royal family but the installation of a monarchy created by the Falangists – the far-right nationalist political group fronted by Franco. Juan Carlos would be compelled to uphold the fundamental laws of the regime, and could be removed if he strayed from them. As such, he was very much at the regime’s mercy. And yet, though no one knew it at the time, he would show the courage and vision to lead Spain’s transition to a democratic future. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-515401714webready-f4ef08c.jpg" width="3891" height="2594" alt="General Franco (right) in Madrid with Juan Carlos. The dictator’s nominated successor “would show the courage and vision to lead Spain’s transition to a democratic future“ (Image by Getty Images)" title="General Franco (right) in Madrid with Juan Carlos. The dictator’s nominated successor “would show the courage and vision to lead Spain’s transition to a democratic future“ (Image by Getty Images)" /> In the late 1960s, that future lay some way off. Franco was still very much alive. By now, the dictator had delegated day-to-day administration of the regime to Carrero Blanco, an appointment that, rather than consolidate the regime, merely accelerated its disintegration. Facing an inexorable rise in working-class and student dissent and the armed opposition of the Basque separatist terrorist organisation, ETA, Carrero intensified repression, employing neo-Nazi organisations, off-duty policemen and civil guards to do his dirty work. It was a strategy that poisoned relations with the Basques, the clergy and workers, and fomented disquiet among the most perceptive elements of the regime. Read more | "If you represent Pinochet in this case, I will divorce you”: the sensational trial of the Chilean dictator It also made him a target for assassination. On 20 December 1973, Carrero was blown up in Madrid by a bomb planted by four ETA operatives. Things got little better under his successor, Carlos Arias Navarro. In fact, an early trickle of defections under Carrero turned into a flood from 1974. With their country blighted by military interventionism, the virulence of the extreme right, violence in the Basque Country, obsolete industries and uneven development, moderates among the ranks of both the regime and the opposition were rapidly reaching the conclusion that only negotiation could prevent a bloodbath. Franco’s invading army Yet those seeking compromise in the wake of Franco’s death in November 1975 were confronted with seemingly insuperable obstacles – chief among them that, under Franco, Spain was governed as if it were a territory conquered by an invading army. The civil war had been provoked and fought by a coalition of rightwing forces to defend their sectoral interests against the reforming ambitions of the democratic Second Republic. Landowners, industrialists and bankers wanted to safeguard their economic privileges; the army to defend the centralised organisation of the Spanish state; and the church to retain its cultural hegemony. Each contributed to Franco’s war effort, financially, militarily or ideologically. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-463210205webready-2e54d5b.jpg" width="2772" height="1848" alt="A black and white photograph showing men in suits sitting around a long table. In front of each man is a folder of papers" title="Juan Carlos presides at the first cabinet meeting after Franco’s death, December 1975. His inbox would soon include terrorism, industrial unrest, and an army that simmered with discontent (Image by Getty Images)" /> The regime’s long-term survival was facilitated by total control of the media and of what passed for an education system to implement a national brainwashing that fomented fear of the return of the ‘reds’. After the civil war, these diverse forces of Francoism remained united by fear and by networks of corruption. Hardline Francoism was entrenched in the army, the police and the Civil Guard. However, for those such as Juan Carlos seeking an alternative future for Spain, there were glimmers of opportunity. Mass demonstrations revealed an overwhelming popular urge for democracy. Juan Carlos knew that important sectors of Spanish capitalism saw the political apparatus of Francoism as an obstacle to growth. In opting boldly for progress, he would be following the advice of British, European and American leaders. Read more | How Italian dictator Benito Mussolini became the first face of fascism While Juan Carlos may have been the most high-profile figure in Spain’s post-Franco reform project, he was far from the only politician seeking to transform the nation. In fact, the brains behind the operation can be said to be Juan Carlos’s one-time tutor, Torcuato Fernández-Miranda, an expert in Francoist constitutional law. As president of the Cortes (Spain’s parliament, which would have to ratify any reform scheme) and of the Council of the Kingdom (which had to endorse prime ministers), Fernández-Miranda would facilitate the ‘legal’ reform that was to be the real basis of the transition. Fernández-Miranda also played a key role in the elevation, in the summer of 1976, to prime minister of the young liberal Falangist Adolfo Suárez. Albeit impelled down the road to democratisation by popular pressure (1976 saw violence, enormous demonstrations and industrial strikes sweep the country) Suárez would be the perfect man for the historic task of steering democratic reform through the Francoist institutions. It was he, more than any other figure, who convinced other politicians that the reform project was serious. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2TCY57Wwebready-04bbc53.jpg" width="5751" height="3834" alt="A black and white photograph showing two men with slicked back hair standing on either side of a microphone" title="Juan Carlos’s one-time tutor, Torcuato Fernández-Miranda (right, in 1969), introduced the legal reforms that facilitated Spain’s move to democracy (Image by Alamy)" /> As for Juan Carlos, his contribution lay firstly in persuading major figures to join Suárez’s cabinet. Secondly, by dint of constant journeys throughout Spain he generated support for reform and rode out the storm of opprobrium provoked by his nomination of Falangists like Suárez. Above all, by appearing in the uniform of commander-in-chief, and through his private meetings with officers, he neutralised the high command of the army and restrained military hostility to the democratic process. In the autumn of 1976, with great skill, Suárez managed to steer Fernández-Miranda’s astute reform project through the Francoist institutions. In mid-November, it was approved in the Cortes by a huge majority of its members, the largely unelected procuradores. Suárez later called it a collective suicide by the “procuradores del harakiri”. Juan Carlos made a considerable effort to make contact with members of the opposition to convince them of the need for moderation. This was rewarded on 15 December when the referendum on political reform saw the project approved by a majority of more than 90 per cent. The opposition’s calls for abstention were ignored by the leftwing rank-and-file – a telling manifestation of popular readiness to make sacrifices to secure the basic framework of democracy. The referendum was a victory for Suárez but also for the mass pressure throughout 1976 that had pushed the government towards democratisation. A SYMBOL OF RECONCILIATION How an amnesty helped Spain confront its past, and its future On 15 June 1977 something remarkable occurred across Spain: people went to the polls in free elections for the first time since 1936. With Adolfo Suárez’s UCD party securing victory, the complex process of building a democracy could now begin. Yet how was this to be achieved without plunging Spain back into dictatorship or the horrors of another civil war? The widespread consensus was that sacrifices would have to be made – and that meant an amnesty. On 14 October, that amnesty passed through Spain’s parliament, the Cortes, into law. This hugely consequential piece of legislation effectively stated that acts of terrorism in opposition to the Franco dictatorship – which meant the sporadic guerrilla warfare of the 1940s and ETA terrorism – and the crimes against human rights in its defence, could not be subject to judicial proceedings. As such, it wiped the slate clean and rested on a tacit, collective agreement of the great majority of the Spanish people to renounce any settling of accounts with Franco’s regime. The public pressure for such an amnesty had been building for months – the previous year, 80,000 people had taken to the streets of Barcelona on successive Sundays to call for one. Yet the passing of the legislation was not without controversy. In early October, Suárez had met with representatives of all parties and warned them that the army, the banks and, to a lesser extent, the church had voiced their objections to an amnesty for political prisoners. That’s why the law that passed through parliament excluded both army officers who had fought for the Republic during the civil war and those involved in the Unión Militar Democrática, a pressure group of liberal officers punished for trying to ensure that the army would not block democratic transformation. Given the numerical discrepancy between the relatively few people involved in acts of violence against the regime and the many involved in its brutal imposition, the law required democratic forces to make a major sacrifice. It was also accompanied by the systematic destruction of the archives of the Franco regime’s repressive apparatus. Yet despite these issues, the amnesty – backed by a near-unanimous vote – seemed to symbolise reconciliation in a country that had been plagued by violence, bitterness and bloodshed for decades. As the basis of the ‘pact of oblivion’ (pacto del olvido) instituted across the political spectrum following Franco’s death, it would be one of the pillars of the transition to democracy. The trump card With elections scheduled for June, Suárez needed to create a party. Convinced that his best chance of success lay with a centre party, Suárez cobbled together the Unión de Centro Democrático by exploiting the need of many small centre right parties for alliances. His trump card was government control of Radio-Television Española and of local administrative machinery. UCD fused five main groups, each in turn composed of several others, all desperate to be part of an electorally viable movement. Ideological and ethical considerations took a back seat. Suárez’s skilful use of the media was rewarded with victory. UCD won 165 seats in the new Cortes, followed by the Socialist PSOE (who enjoyed considerable international support) with 118. The Communist Party of Spain and rightwing Alianza Popular trailed way behind with 20 and 16 seats respectively. But an essential part of the progress towards the elections also posed the greatest obstacle to the long-term consolidation of democracy. The legalisation of the Communist Party on 9 April confirmed the military’s conviction that its job was less to defend Spain from external enemies and more to safeguard Franco’s civil war victory. This wasn’t the only threat to the nascent democracy. From 1977 until 1982, on a monthly basis, Juan Carlos had to impose his authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces on officers outraged because Suárez’s minister of defence, General Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, manoeuvred liberal officers into, and reactionaries out of, key positions. The situation was worsened by the relentless provocation of ETA’s attacks on officers. The response of the ultras within the army was golpismo – conspiracy to restore the dictatorship. At frequent receptions for senior officers at his Zarzuela Palace and on tense visits to garrisons, Juan Carlos argued powerfully for unity and discipline. Nevertheless, the crisis intensified and in late 1980 a plot was hatched to launch a military coup. The ex-secretary general of the royal household, General Alfonso Armada, persuaded other generals, most notably the Captain-General of Valencia, the ultra Jaime Milans del Bosch, that he had royal approval to instigate regime change. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-515557430webready-e05d150.jpg" width="3356" height="2237" alt="A black and white photograph showing a man in military uniform standing at a pulpit in parliament, holding one arm in the air and a gun in the other hand" title="Antonio Tejero draws his pistol inside the Spanish parliament. The attempted coup of February 1981 constituted the greatest threat to Spain’s nascent democracy (Image by Getty Images)" /> At the end of January 1981, facing a revolt from within his own party as his popularity crumbled, Suárez resigned as prime minister. This left the king as the most visible guarantor of democracy but his meetings with Armada enabled the latter to give the impression of royal collusion in what was being plotted – and on 23 February, the plotters struck. Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero seized the entire Spanish political elite as they attended the Cortes investiture of a new cabinet under Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, while Milans del Bosch ordered tanks into the streets of Valencia. Read more | The bombing of Guernica: who was responsible? Alone with his immediate staff, the king courageously headed the operation to dismantle the coup. In the course of a tense night, he appeared on television insisting that he would uphold the constitution. He telephoned Milans, effectively informing him that he would have to kill him in order to succeed: “I swear to you that I will neither abdicate nor leave Spain.” His intervention effectively ended the putsch. By the end of the month, the conspirators were in prison. Plots to kill a king In October 1982, the Socialists won a substantial victory in a new round of elections. From this moment forward, Juan Carlos no longer had to be called out as a ‘fireman’, and could act more as a constitutional head of state. The twin problems of Basque terrorism and military subversion remained, and there were ETA plots to assassinate Juan Carlos in 1985, 1986, 1995 and 1997. What’s more, the king still had to walk the tightrope of keeping both left and right onside – persuading the opposition that he would play a role in democratisation, while maintaining the support of Francoists by seeming to respect the constitutional laws on which, until 1977, his ‘legitimacy’ rested. In this, it certainly helped that the king was a naturally affable type. A telling example derives from the period in 1978 when the new democratic constitution was being elaborated by a parliamentary commission, or Ponencia. There was a reception for the haughty French president Giscard d’Estaing, who was visiting Madrid. At one point, Juan Carlos sidled over to Miquel Roca i Junyent, a member of the Ponencia, and whispered: “Don’t you think he looks more like a king than I do?” Looks can be deceptive, of course. And from the nightmare that threatened to envelop Spain following Franco’s death, the self-deprecating monarch and his colleagues had achieved something remarkable: they had successfully harnessed a people’s collective determination never to face civil war and dictatorship again. SURVIVING FRANCO A timeline of the 40-year battle for the soul of Spain 1936–39 Nationalist forces headed by General Franco overthrow the Second Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Franco establishes a dictatorship that will endure until the 1970s. 26 July 1947 The Law of Succession establishes Spain as a kingdom with Franco as head of state. Franco has the right to nominate his successor. July 1969 Franco announces the identity of his successor: Juan Carlos, grandson of King Alfonso XIII. 20 December 1973 Franco’s prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco is assassinated by ETA. 20 November 1975 Franco dies. Juan Carlos becomes king and head of state. 5 July 1976 Adolfo Suárez becomes prime minister. Later that year, the Spanish parliament overwhelmingly approves his reform project. 15 June 1977 Suárez’s UCD party secures victory in Spain’s first free elections since 1936. 14 October 1977 An amnesty passes into law effectively stating that crimes committed in support of, or opposition to, Franco’s regime could not be subject to judicial proceedings. 23 February 1981 Rightwing army officers attempt a coup. After Juan Carlos tells them that he will neither abdicate nor leave Spain, the perpetrators are placed behind bars. Paul Preston is a historian of the Spanish Civil War. His most recent book is Perfidious Albion: Britain and the Spanish Civil War (Clapton, 2024) This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Spectral beasts and hounds of hell: a spooky history of Britain's ghost dogs
From infernal black dogs attacking churches to ravening, red-eyed brutes on remote roads, Britain has long been haunted by fearsome canine phantoms. Karen R Jones explores what these stories can tell us about societies past
On the morning of 4 August 1577, the good Christian folk of Bungay assembled in St Mary’s Church for their regular Sunday service. But more sinister forces were also gathering in the Suffolk town. Dark clouds massed above, then “there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest… not simply of raine but also of lightening and thunder”. This storm was only the prelude to a “straunge and terrible Wunder” described by Abraham Fleming in a pamphlet published soon after the event. For the church was plunged into darkness and a “black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse” burst in. It wrung the necks of two worshippers then “passing by an other man of the congregation… gave him such a gripe on the back, that therewith all he was presently drawen togither and shrunk up, as it were a peece of lether scorched in a hot fire”. The story of the Black Dog of Bungay is extraordinary, but far from unique in the region – East Anglia is the primary hunting ground of the spectral beast named Black Shuck – and, indeed, across the country. Britain is, famously, a nation of animal lovers, with 36 per cent of households having at least one dog. The UK canine consumer market is worth around £10bn a year, while millions of us tune in to watch dog-centric television programmes. These animals have become our trusted aides and loyal companions since domesticated dogs arrived on this island with the first human migrants during the Stone Age. It’s not surprising, then, that Britain’s population of paranormal pups is more diverse and widespread than anywhere else in the world, according to Mark Norman, a folklorist specialising in black dog apparitions. Such creatures reputedly stalk villages and lonely roads from Aberdeen to Penzance, and the British landscape echoes with their chilling howls. Hellhound is round the corner Dogs and humans have lived and travelled together in Britain since the Mesolithic age. Archaeological surveys place dogs at the UK’s oldest excavated house – at Star Carr, Yorkshire, dating from around 9000 BC – and at the oldest site of journeying, a camp at Blick Mead near Stonehenge. Dogs accompanied pastoralists rounding up sheep in grasslands and joined hunters tracking deer in forests, before settling down to snooze in front of the communal fire. No wonder they also populated ghostly tales. In story and song, from whispered yarn to local gazetteer, ghost dogs bound across the folkloric and literary record, with perhaps the most famous fictional example being the Hound of the Baskervilles investigated by Sherlock Holmes. In many reported cases, a factual explanation remains deliciously elusive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1137155402-CMYKWeb-Ready-56e37c4.jpg" width="2501" height="1667" alt="A black poster showing a large wolf with his mouth open. In front of his face, the words "The Hound of the Baskervilles" are written in red" title="A poster for the 1959 Sherlock Holmes film The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired by tales of ghostly dogs on Dartmoor (Image by Getty Images)" /> All manner of spirit dogs have been reported. Some are devoted pets pining for lost masters and mistresses, padding eternally along the walks they took in life, carrying with them the textured reportage of hearsay, tradition and family fortunes. Some are seen as portents of doom, some relate particular cultural coordinates of injustice, wrongdoing or violent ends, and others just are. Some people who are convinced by such tales claim that these are beasts appearing to us from ancient days – messengers demonstrating the existence of a time-slip or a ‘thin place’. The unconvinced retort airily that we like to tell tales – Booker Prize-winning author Graham Swift called humans “storytelling animals” – and that of course those yarns frequently invoke our long-standing companions of homestead and hearthside. Most of Britain’s ghost dogs are connected to specific sites of historical significance where long-standing relationships between humans and canines have been written repeatedly into the material and imagined environment. They haunt village streets, ancient camps, burial mounds and graveyards, historic houses and castles. Read more | From the headless 'Blemmae' to a flesh-eating wolf: a 500-year history of monsters Road ragers Ancient trackways, roads and paths seem to attract a special breed of spectral beast – black dogs that leap out at unsuspecting travellers on dark, lonely nights. These are the most prolific canine apparitions, accounting for about a third of British sightings. Most of them are large and sport flaming eyes; some clank chains, while others can talk. All are fearsome. One of the most striking highway hauntings was reported on the road between Tavistock and Okehampton on Dartmoor. Here, on dark nights, the ghost of Lady Howard rode out from her home at Fitzford House in a grisly coach made from the bones of her dead husbands, heading to Okehampton Castle. Running ahead was a hellhound with blazing eyes and a demonic disposition. Sometimes she offered a lift to lost travellers: accept at your peril. Also on Dartmoor, you might encounter the Wisht Hounds kennelled by the devil in Wistman’s Wood. And at the East Dart Hotel, a former coaching inn near Postbridge, a ghostly bloodhound appears each night at 3am to snuffle eagerly at the road outside, hoping to lap up the remnants of discarded booze poured into the gutter by the guilt-ridden landlord, John Webb, over a century ago. The dipsomaniac dog follows the road down the hill to a clapper bridge, eternally searching for the long-discarded grog in the early hours. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1911350831-CMYKWeb-Ready-23adf67.jpg" width="2967" height="1978" alt="A black and white illustration of a large, naked man, standing and holding onto a chain that is around the neck of a three headed dogs" title="A 16th-century engraving shows Hercules dragging the three-headed dog Cerberus from the gates of Hades (Image by Getty Images)" /> Dartmoor epitomises the kind of place where ghost dogs congregate: bleak, lonesome spots where the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Dark copses. Craggy peaks. Desolate moors. These are environments that inspire awe and even fear. No wonder they host such beastly apparitions as the Gytrash – a massive dog-spirit frequenting the remote highways of the West Riding of Yorkshire – and the Barghest, a demonic hound with huge teeth and claws roving the darker stretches of the Yorkshire Dales. One Barghest near Whitby sometimes dragged chains behind it, and could vanish into thin air by walking backwards. All were best avoided, auguring bad fortune or death – though they reputedly could not cross rivers. In Wales, the Cŵn Annwn, or ‘hounds of the underworld’, were often seen or heard before a funeral, baying mournfully. Typically, they sported glowing red eyes but their appearance otherwise varied depending on where they were seen: they might be huge and white, small and liver-coloured, or even red-coated, dripping with blood. They might rove lonely roads in a pack but sometimes travelled singly, often accompanied by Arawn, Lord of the Underworld and leader of the ‘wild hunt’. They were particularly associated with crossroads, enjoyed haunting graves, and often frequented mountains. Read more | The child-eating Christmas Yule Cat: what are the origins of this Icelandic folklore? These examples reveal much about our complex relationship with wild spaces. Sure, today we seek out these places for forest bathing, wild camping and an escape from modernity. And yet the vestigial unease they inspire in some people is a psychological throwback to our ancient past, when wolves and bears dwelt in uncharted spaces, and when wilderness connoted chaos, a descent into feral madness and devilry. They are places where Canis familiaris might revert to its lupine ancestor, Canis lupus, transforming from strong and trusty aide into a savage, malevolent assailant. Not all ghost hounds are out for blood, though. Though most tales about Black Shuck portray his appearance as an omen auguring imminent death or ill fortune, on occasion he struck fenland folk as friendly, and even had a penchant for helping women travellers. And the Gurt Dog of Somerset’s Quantock Hills was an entirely affable apparition: a shaggy Samaritan that appeared from the fog to guide lost children safely to their homes. Good or bad omens? Inhabited places, too, harbour their share of spectral hounds. Not one but two black dogs are said to wander the grounds of Leeds Castle, Kent (coincidentally home to the world’s largest collection of dog collars). One, a portent of doom, first appeared in the 1440s, after Eleanor Cobham, Henry VI’s aunt, was tried for witchcraft and incarcerated in the castle. The second, a more benign spectre, is said to bring good luck, and once reputedly saved a visitor from falling out of a window, having attracted their attention by barking. Both are curly coated retriever types, so anyone encountering such a spectre here might struggle to determine whether it is a good or bad omen. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/J4X3AR-CMYKWeb-Ready-826fb01.jpg" width="2952" height="1968" alt="An illustration showing a large black dog standing on its hind legs, with snakes on its head. To the right, there is a man in jacket and tall hat is holding the dog's muzzle" title="A woodcut of the phantom Black Dog of Newgate. The canine apparition reportedly haunted the precincts of the notorious London prison, attacking inmates who’d killed and eaten a new arrival (Image by Alamy)" /> The story of the Black Dog of Newgate was popularised in a sensational 1596 pamphlet describing a canine phantom that stalked the notorious prison. During the reign of Henry III, the yarn goes, inmates of the prison were so hungry that they killed a new arrival, a scholar, and devoured his body. His ghost then wandered the confines of the prison – as did the spectre of a huge black dog. Some prisoners died of fright upon seeing the beast. Others were ripped to pieces by its fearsome jaws in retribution. Even those who escaped the prison were pursued by the avenging animal. Friend or foe? Why are dogs the creatures most commonly cited in accounts of animal apparitions? Partly, it’s because of their long relationship with and proximity to humans. The dog’s alter ego, the wolf, also adds that sense of the fearsome wild into the psychological scare-scape. There is also a biological factor at play: an awareness that dogs are gifted with extraordinary sensory powers. A dog’s nose is equipped with about 300 million olfactory receptors – far more than a human’s paltry 5–6 million. Their hearing, too, is vastly superior to our own. These endow them with almost ‘supernatural’ abilities, reflected in their roles in the beliefs and legends of various cultures worldwide. The Aztecs believed that their Xoloitzcuintli dogs could ‘smell’ ghosts, and thus protect their owners from spirits. In Norse mythology, Freya, a god linked with death, rode a chariot pulled by huge cats – thus a household dog might alert the residents to her approach by howling and barking, potentially averting a fatal incident. And in ancient Greek legend, the three-headed hound Cerberus guarded the entrance to Hades, suggesting that dogs were equipped to patrol the boundary between the living and the dead. Such beliefs in the extrasensory abilities of animals persist: in a 2019 survey for the Blue Cross animal charity, 63 per cent of owners said they believed that their pet had seen (or had the capacity to see) a ghost or other supernatural presence. Indeed, perhaps the most intriguing part of spectral dog stories is the fact that in many places they are still thriving today. Ghost dogs are seen through the windscreens of cars, stalking major roads just as happily as they did ancient trackways. Take that infernal assailant in Bungay in 1577. Black Shuck became – and still is – a widespread legend across East Anglia, written into regional folklore by Reverend ES Taylor in a 1850 issue of Notes and Queries, describing “Shuck the Dog-fiend… this phantom I have heard many persons in east Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire, describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes and of immense size, and who visits churchyards at midnight”. Read more | When a Victorian ghost hunter investigated Britain’s most haunted house, this is what he found Paranormal investigators documenting reports of Shuck sightings found that the majority of alleged encounters occurred after 1900 – so, in fact, his presence in the regional psyche appears to have burgeoned rather than receded in the modern age. Reflecting the continuing salience of this legend, and a broader revival of interest in all matters folkloric, in 2022 a Black Shuck Festival was launched in Bungay to celebrate the town’s famous fiendish beast. Perhaps these tales of Shuck and his phantom canine kin have even more relevance in our polarised and fractured society today. They speak of the importance of roots, of the storied pasts that bind humans to other species. And in a time when anthropogenic change threatens us in far-reaching and fundamental ways, they speak of the importance of acknowledging the limits of what we, as humans, can know and control in the natural (or supernatural) world. Karen R Jones is professor of environmental and cultural history at the University of Kent. Her latest book, Beastly Britain: An Animal History, was published in May by Yale University Press This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Who should decide the stories museums tell?
Increasingly, museums are being challenged on how they select, display and interpret their collections. Six historians explain how these institutions can adapt to suit 21st-century audiences
“If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full life history of every object in their collection” – Justin M Jacobs It has become fashionable today for critics of major western museums to call for a ‘reckoning’ or ‘coming to terms’ with the imperialist and racist histories of some institutions. This approach is rooted in the idea that, every time a museum chooses to tell a particular story, this story inevitably reflects the unconscious biases of the curators who tell it. There’s much to recommend this approach – but there’s also a problem. Too often, institutions simply replace the bygone voices of long-dead white men with the present-day voices of people descended from the communities or nations that originally produced the artefact on display. But is this really a more inclusive approach? Scholars who study the history of artefacts in museums are acutely aware that nearly every object on display has served different functions and had a different symbolic value down the years. In addition, many diverse peoples have owned or interacted with these objects. It follows that choosing to tell only a single story closely associated with present-day ideological agendas does a great disservice to the museum-going public. Take the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles, for instance. Over the course of the past 2,000 years, they have played an integral role in embodying the political power and cultural beliefs of the ancient Athenians, Romans, Christians, Muslims, British and modern Greeks. Yet according to current intellectual fashions and political sympathies, only one of these stories is deemed legitimate: that promoted by the modern Greeks. This, of course, is merely a reflection of the unconscious bias of our own day and age, which consistently promotes the alleged authenticity of nation states that didn’t even exist prior to the modern era. This is the very antithesis of an inclusive approach. If museums truly want to be inclusive, they should tell the full life history and evolving symbolisms of every object in their collection – even when these stories don’t reflect the ideological trends of the present moment. Justin M Jacobs is a professor of history at American University in Washington, DC, and the author of Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures (Reaktion Books, 2024) “There is something colonial about leaving decisions on displays to only those who can afford to work in museums” – Christienna Fryar Few institutions teach more people about the past than museums. Historians may wish otherwise, but more people pop into a museum or National Trust property on a day out than read the latest scholarship. It’s their importance that has made the question of who decides what stories museums tell so vexed in recent years. These questions are necessary, because museums are colonial institutions. They flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries as repositories for the so-called curiosities European collectors had purloined from territories abroad. Museums in the west still claim to be the best protectors of treasures that countries of origin want back. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/J4X823-CMYK-80ca370.jpg" width="3286" height="2190" alt="A painting showing a group of people crouched down in a large forested area, poised to attack" title="A painting shows members of the Maroon community of formerly enslaved Africans during an ambush in Jamaica, 1795. Christienna Fryar argues that museums should cover their story more (Image by Alamy)" /> Then there’s the matter of who works in museums. Entry-level museum jobs are often poorly paid and based in expensive cities – not very attractive to people whose families cannot subsidise their lives. There is also something colonial about leaving decisions on displays to only those who can afford to work in museums and who received traditional university educations. Museums must work more consciously, consistently and collaboratively with descendant historians (those who research people they descend from), curators, artists and storytellers. Many institutions now cite co-production as a key value, but employing these experts and paying them appropriately is as important as working with local volunteer groups to design exhibitions. Descendant experts often use family histories and community knowledge to tell stories ignored by traditional scholarship. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history Take the history of enslavement. Too often, the focus in Britain is on the goods that circulated the Atlantic basin in the so-called ‘Triangular Trade’ (often sidestepping the brutality of the trade in humans) and the money that changed hands. But what about the swamps and the mountains where fugitives from slavery established Maroon communities? Museums are also responsible for telling these stories of survival, daring, skill, environmental know-how and community. Christienna Fryar is a historian of Britain and the Caribbean, and CEO of the Liverpool charity Mary Seacole House “In the 21st century, there need to be multiple stories in and about the museum – and multiple storytellers” – Adam Mosley The origins of today’s museums lie in pre-modern princely and scholarly collections. Historically, the collectors – along with the curators they employed and those who followed them – exerted considerable power over the museum as a space in which the world was represented and knowledge was produced. Curators still play a key role in choosing and shaping the stories their institutions are best positioned to tell. Many are enormously knowledgeable about the objects in their care, and it would be a tragedy to disregard their expertise, or that of academics, when using heritage collections to illuminate past, present and future. However, most curators and scholars know that they cannot and should not monopolise the generation of stories. It would be futile, in any case, for curators – let alone politicians – to attempt to dictate absolutely the message conveyed in any exhibition. Visitors bring with them their own memories, insights and perspectives. Their knowledge can supplement or correct that of ‘experts’. They may connect with displays emotionally in unexpected ways. They have stories of their own to tell about what they find in a museum. Increasingly, museums work in partnership with the public to tell new stories with their collections, to give a voice to those historically under-represented and excluded, and to unlock the meaning of their holdings for diverse audiences. Histories get rewritten in the museum, just as they do in universities. Sometimes these fresh interpretations can cause discomfort to those who would prefer museums to retell familiar stories. New perspectives can also challenge the very grounds on which a museum claims the right to hold particular objects. The ways in which museums are responding to these kinds of dialogues constitutes an evolving story in itself – one concerned with whose views matter and how to deal with problematic legacies from the past. In the 21st century, there need to be multiple stories in and about the museum – and multiple storytellers, too. Single-voice stories are no longer sufficient. Adam Mosley is an associate professor in history at Swansea University “Two-thirds of curators in the UK are women – but museum leadership is still largely an old boys’ club” – Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth Henry Cole, the first director of the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) from 1857, once declared that museums should be a “schoolroom for everyone”. But that begs a question: who sets the curriculum? Who is making the decisions on which stories museums tell, and why? Is it the curatorial team, senior management, external funding bodies or the gift shop? And what is the demographic of these groups? Although two-thirds of museum curators in the UK are women, museum leadership is still largely an old boys’ club. Recent reports by Art Fund and the Museum X project have shown that cultural diversity across the sector is at an all-time low. Can we ever truly diversify the stories that museums tell without first achieving greater diversity in the museum workforce? Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue" My own research focuses on art collectors, particularly the agency of women, non-binary and trans people. This topic is being explored across more museums thanks to schemes such as Katy Hessel’s audio series Museums Without Men. The National Gallery, too, is conducting research into female benefactors, noting the fact that only 27 out of its 2,300 paintings are by women. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/MP38ER-CMYK-a676a50.jpg" width="1899" height="1266" alt="A 1782 self-portrait by French artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun – one of only 27 works by women among the National Gallery’s 2,300 paintings (Image by Alamy)" title="A 1782 self-portrait by French artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun – one of only 27 works by women among the National Gallery’s 2,300 paintings (Image by Alamy)" /> It’s 140 years since Lady Charlotte Schreiber, one of the greatest Victorian collectors, split her trove of 5,000 objects between the V&A and the British Museum. Charlotte was determined that the artworks she spent decades researching should become the property of the nation. Honouring the spirit of that act of generosity, surely we have a duty to be in dialogue with the public and to keep them at the forefront of the stories that museums choose to tell? I believe that the future lies in collaboration and co-creation through public engagement. Museums are most successful when they reach out and establish meaningful dialogues with local communities, artists, academics, PhD students, schoolchildren, youth groups and more. Museums should be places of curiosity, creativity and connection that are always changing and evolving – just like the stories they should tell. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth is a senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of Lady Charlotte Schreiber (Lund Humphries, 2025) “Museums need to be alert to the risk of a fragmentation of culture and history” – Jeremy Black Museums should inform, educate, inspire, entertain and preserve – but this says nothing about how best to do this. Which objects in the permanent holding should be shown? How should museums drum up interest? How should holdings be curated, and how best explained? What temporary exhibitions should be commissioned? How should collaborations be organised? Who should be guest curators? What role should the public or government play? In 2024, Birmingham Museums established a Citizens’ Jury. This summer, the National Gallery announced the launch of NG Citizens – the first time a UK gallery or museum has set up a national citizens’ assembly. These bodies will presumably question the aesthetic judgment of curators. There will be lapses and controversies. Nevertheless, it is always good for an institution to find out what its potential audience wants. Of course, not everyone is happy about such initiatives, but their legitimacy is difficult to deny in a democracy. The National Gallery has a clue in the name: it is supposed to be national. More generally, developing processes that promote and support public involvement puts institutions in a solid position when defending the way they present their collections, put on and organise exhibitions or justify funding applications. An institution is harder to criticise if a cross-section of the population has advised it. In pursuing such public involvement, it is necessary to avoid ‘pillarisation’ – a term borrowed from the Dutch verzuiling, which describes a society in which different groups have their own distinct social institutions and organisations. Apply this to museums and there’s a risk of different interest groups, however defined and represented, putting on exhibitions or organising collections to reflect what they prefer. Museums need to be alert to the risk of a fragmentation of culture and history, which can in turn create an endless spiral of groups spawning sub-groups, and museums becoming mired in controversy. Yet, though democratic processes of consultation pose many problems, the alternatives are worse. Jeremy Black is a historian, formerly a professor at the University of Exeter, and the author of more than 180 books “Ideas once thought impossible, such as the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, are now frequently discussed” – Mirjam S Brusius For a long time, museums have suggested that each object has just one official story – the one written on its label. Large institutions such as the British Museum often present themselves as neutral spaces that show the world simultaneously from ‘nowhere and everywhere’. Yet this approach rarely acknowledges how these objects were collected, nor how museums reshape the objects’ presentation to fit particular narratives. So who really speaks through the labels we see in museums? Is it a team of curators, one individual or the institution as a whole? And why do labels usually rely on expert voices instead of including personal accounts by those who used these objects, or the histories of how the objects entered the collection in the first place? These questions feel especially urgent today. Museums are under growing pressure to confront their colonial legacies, to consider returning certain objects, and to tell stories that include more perspectives. Ideas once thought impossible – such as the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece – are now frequently discussed. Still, while demands for repatriation have been voiced for decades, many communities remain unheard, many stories untold. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year It is time for museums to rethink how they frame their collections. This means creating space for voices from the global south where many of these objects originated, and acknowledging their cultural and historical significance beyond western narratives. We have an opportunity today to reimagine these institutions as spaces for dialogue, reflection and accountability. One way forward is through even more participatory approaches, involving both visitors and source communities in shaping museum narratives. New tools – digital platforms, interactive displays, labels that offer multiple perspectives – can help objects tell more than one story. This approach could not only enrich our understanding of the past but also transform museums into more inclusive, honest and engaging spaces. Mirjam S Brusius is a historian and one of the initiators of 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object (100histories100worlds.org)
Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think
What did medieval physicians prescribe for stomach ache? And could weasels’ testicles really help you conceive? James Freeman delves into the sources to find eight curious cures from the Middle Ages
My urine has turned black! What does your wee say about your health? Well, plenty – but perhaps not in quite the way medieval physicians understood it. Before the in-depth study of anatomy and physiology, establishing the causes of symptoms relied on theories that today seem primitive or foolish. However, they were often based on long-established ideas about the body and its function. Medieval treatises on uroscopy – the study of urine – identified up to 20 colours, each indicating certain diseases. Many texts on this subject were accompanied by drawings of glass flasks filled with liquid coloured with an appropriate pigment. These might be arranged in a circular shape with descriptive labels, helping readers to memorise the key diagnostic details. Perhaps unsurprisingly, black was the worst possible colour, and was generally agreed to indicate imminent death. Why was urine so significant? Because of prohibitions against opening the body (which extended to postmortem dissections), medieval doctors were reliant on external indicators. This included variations in a patient’s pulse but also the colour, texture, layers, smell and even taste of their urine. The doctor’s role was to understand a patient’s nature: specifically, the four fluids or ‘humours’ inside the human body. In the treatise De Natura Hominis (‘On the Nature of Man’), by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (c460–c375 BC) or his pupil Polybus, it was determined that there were four such humours: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Disease was caused by imbalances in these humours, or when they became ‘corrupted’ or concentrated in a part of the body. Read more | It felt like the end of the world, but this medieval ‘apocalypse’ left a legacy no one saw coming This theory was developed further by Galen of Pergamon (c129–c216), who likened digestion to the cooking process: food was converted into life-giving liquid, the humours were generated by the vital organs, and waste products – including urine – were expelled. Examining urine could therefore inform the physician about the state of a patient’s digestion and of any possible humoural imbalance and the disease that might result from it. I’ve got an excruciating pain in my bottom Medieval knights and noblemen could spend significant amounts of time on horseback. And who can blame them? This was, after all, the quickest way to get around. But it could also be extraordinarily painful. Occupy the saddle for too long and you could start to suffer from an anal fistula – a condition that causes an abscess or an abnormal opening between the anal canal and the surrounding skin. This is as unpleasant as it sounds – which is why some sufferers called on the services of a medic called John Arderne. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-587494702-CMYKWeb-Ready-a626f03.jpg" width="5178" height="3452" alt="A painting showing two men dressed in red and pink riding horses. They are following several brown dogs through the woods and on the ground, three more men walk through the grass, holding spears" title="Nobles hunt a fox in a 14th-century miniature. Spending long periods in the saddle could lead to a painful condition for which surgeon John Arderne devised a novel treatment (Image by Getty Images)" /> Arderne was one of the most famous English surgeons of the 14th century. Among the novel developments he described in his writings, he came up with a procedure for treating anal fistulas that involved a surgical dilator called a tendiculum and a kind of flattened needle called an acus rostrata. Arderne also illustrated the stages involved in the operation, and described medicines that could be injected into the rectum in a bid to promote healing. One of these – made up of rose oil and the single yolk of a raw egg – should be administered with the aid of a hollow wooden instrument called a nastare ligneum. This needed to be lubricated with rose oil and “gently inserted into the anus”. “This,” Arderne promised, “effectively mitigates and mollifies any burning, stinging, itching and pain.” His patients would, no doubt, have prayed that he was good to his word. I’m about to go into labour Childbirth was perhaps the most perilous event in any medieval woman’s life. This was a primary focus of Gynaecia, a treatise perhaps written in the fifth or sixth century and ascribed to an author known as ‘Muscio’ (who was possibly from north Africa). Gynaecia explained how normal and abnormal births should be managed, prioritised the role of midwives, and described different malpresentations of the foetus – and what should be done to ease the birth in such cases. In one manuscript from the Middle Ages, passages from the Gynaecia are accompanied by illustrations showing these various positions of foetuses in wombs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-566452471-CMYKWeb-Ready-47f4bbc.jpg" width="3763" height="2509" alt="An illustration showing a woman in a long red dress sitting on a chair. Around her, there are four other women, touching various parts of her body" title="A manuscript illumination shows a woman in childbirth. The fifth or sixth-century treatise Gynaecia provided detailed advice for deliveries (Image by Getty Images)" /> Some women who “travaileth of child” might turn to magic for help. Recipe books and medical guides both contained instructions for preparing protective amulets that should be lain on a woman’s belly or thighs. Designed to be viewed, worn and read, these objects were believed to protect their wearers from harm by association with holy bodies and the pains they suffered. One typical text from the late 14th or early 15th century invokes the names of holy mothers and their children: “Saint Mary bore Christ, Saint Anna bore Mary, Saint Elizabeth bore Saint John the Baptist.” Another example contains images of the instruments of Christ’s Passion and of his wounds and blood; a measurement of the length of the Virgin Mary’s body; and prayers to early fourth-century mother-and-son martyrs Saint Julitta and Saint Quiricus. I can't stop farting What did our medieval ancestors do when they were afflicted by stomach pains? And what remedies could they deploy if, worse still, that pain was accompanied by an attack of flatulence? One option was to take an electuary, a type of orally administered remedy sweetened, usually with honey, to make it more palatable. A recipe for one such remedy contained a dizzying number of ingredients – some more familiar to the modern eye than others. These included sugar, chebulic myrobalan (fruits from an Asian tree), nuts, anise, caraway, fennel, cloves, the wood of aloes, mastic, French muscat and syrup. “You will,” so the recipe instructed, “give this in the form of a hazelnut [ie as a hazelnut-sized pill], at morning and night with warm water and wine or with wine alone.” This recipe comes from a compilation of over a thousand remedies known as the Antidotarium Magnum, which was compiled in the 11th century by a monk of north African heritage known as Constantinus Africanus, who lived at the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy. Innovatively, the text advised how much of each ingredient was required, using a system of symbols to denote measurements such as drams, scruples, pounds, sixths and halves. The Antidotarium Magnum’s ingredients suggest that it was inspired by Islamic, Byzantine and classical sources. Yet that didn’t stop a copy reaching Durham Cathedral Priory, where – judging by the presence of a key to explain the meaning of these symbols – the monks tried to make some of the medicines that it describes. Read more | Victorian medicine: why the 19th century was a time of seismic medical change I’m feeling feverish In the modern world, fevers are understood to be symptoms of the body’s immune response to infection. In the medieval period, however, a fever was thought to be a disease in its own right – an overheating of the body caused by malfunctioning digestive processes. And, in an attempt to turn down the heat, medieval medics often went on a charm offensive. Today, science and magic tend to occupy separate spheres. In the Middle Ages, though, it was widely believed – even among learned medics – that words and rituals possessed healing potential, and many medieval manuscripts from the Middle Ages contain instructions for the recitation of magical charms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/G2NJEX-CMYKWeb-Ready-aaedadc.jpg" width="3088" height="2058" alt="Doctors treat an ailing king, as depicted in an illumination in a 14th-century French manuscript. Charms were often used to treat conditions such as fevers (Image by Alamy)" title="Doctors treat an ailing king, as depicted in an illumination in a 14th-century French manuscript. Charms were often used to treat conditions such as fevers (Image by Alamy)" /> One example instructed the reader to make three signs of the cross “on the right ear of the feverish, and with each cross, say in succession: ‘Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.’” The reader was then advised to write a series of charms involving the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – not to mention a lamb, a sheep and a lion (all of which appear in a prophetic passage in Isaiah 11) – on the patient’s palms. But perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this charm was that its healing power was only realised when the patient drank the ink with which it was written. This may not have been particularly pleasing to the palate but the patient could at least console themselves in the promise that, “without doubt, he will be cured”. I’m suffering from menstrual cramps Not everyone could afford to pay for the services of elite medics such as John Arderne. For the vast majority of people in the Middle Ages, finding a cure for illness meant relying on healers, their family or neighbours. These do-it-yourself doctors used everyday ingredients and common wild plants, which were crushed, chopped, boiled and strained with simple equipment found in the home. And, by the 14th and 15th centuries, this local medical knowledge bank was increasingly being collated and disseminated in hundreds of simple medicinal recipes written in vernacular languages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-148796224-CMYKWeb-Ready-8093d13.jpg" width="3003" height="2002" alt="A medieval handbook shows a woman gathering medicinal plants. They were commonly used by ‘do-it-yourself doctors’ at this time (Image by Getty Images)" title="A medieval handbook shows a woman gathering medicinal plants. They were commonly used by ‘do-it-yourself doctors’ at this time (Image by Getty Images)" /> The medicines contained within these recipes were often administered in draughts – liquid concoctions for patients to drink. Or they could be applied via sticky salves applied to the skin on pieces of fabric or leather. Some cures – such as one for “grinding and aching in the womb”, found in a 15th-century English recipe – employed both. “Take five-leaf and stamp it and temper it with stale ale,” it counselled, “and giveth the sick to drink thereof, five spoonfuls at once, and seethe and bind it to her navel as hot as she may suffer.” I’ve lost my hearing If you opened a medical manuscript in the Middle Ages, then you may have been confronted by the sight of ‘Vein Man’. No, ‘Vein Man’ wasn’t a medieval superhero but a visual aid, designed to help readers locate veins in the human body. He makes for an interesting figure – chiefly for what he tells us about medieval people’s attitudes to their health. In order to cure many diseases, physicians might attempt to restore the correct humoural balance, often through purging the body of an excess or corrupted humour. A common method for this was phlebotomy, or bloodletting: the controlled release of blood from a patient’s veins. That’s where ‘Vein Man’ came into his own. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/USE-THIS-Vein-ManMS-ADD-03303-00003-000-00001Web-Ready-dc0ba1f.jpg" width="2630" height="1754" alt="An illustration of a man laying on a red surface with squares on it. Several organs in his body are labelled and there are notes all around the diagram" title="A c15th-century illustration of ‘Zodiac Man’, showing the influence of constellations on different parts of the body (Image by Cambridge University Library)" /> Accompanying labels described the ways in which bloodletting could alleviate a variety of ailments. For example: “Opening the vein next to the nostrils purges the head and aids and strengthens the hearing.” However, timing such interventions carefully was crucial. It was believed that each part of the body was governed by a sign of the Zodiac: Aries was linked to the head, whereas Pisces was connected to the feet. If the moon was in conjunction with a particular constellation, it was considered perilous to operate on the area governed by that sign of the Zodiac. This principle was summarised in a second kind of diagram, ‘Zodiac Man’. This comprised a human figure appended with the names (and sometimes miniature drawings) of the Zodiac signs. Again, accompanying labels provided advice – for example, when the moon was in Aries, you should “avoid incisions in the head or face and do not open the capital vein”. Read more | This dynasty of medieval kings had a secret weapon – and you probably have it too I can’t conceive Have you ever procured a weasel testicle from your local pharmacy? Or burned half a handful of young mouse-ear in an earthenware pot? No, thought not. But if you’d lived 800 years ago – and been struggling to conceive – the answer may have been different. Weasel testicle and mouse-ear (which, for those who don’t know, is a plant found all over Britain and Ireland) were two of the main ingredients in a medieval treatment for infertility. One remedy instructed users to grind and combine them into a “soft pill” which should be placed “so deeply in the private parts that they touch the uterus”. This was to be left for three days, during which the woman was advised to abstain entirely from sex. After this, the recipe continued, “she should have intercourse with a man and she should conceive without delay”. Medieval people believed that their world was divinely created and organised, with plants, animals and even stones placed there for the benefit of humans. It was thus logical that parts of an animal’s body, or plants shaped like vital organs, might have curative properties for corresponding parts of a human body. Treatments for infertility often employed bits of animals known to be prolific breeders. The remedy above was one of dozens compiled in the notebook of a Carmelite friar, Richard Tenet, in the early 15th century. Unlike monks, who were cloistered within their abbeys and priories, mendicant friars travelled between towns and cities; they relied on charitable alms, which they earned by preaching and hearing confessions. This brought them into contact with ordinary people, including women, from whom they appear to have learned common treatments. James Freeman is a medieval manuscripts specialist at the University of Cambridge. He is curator of Curious Cures: Medicine in the Medieval World, which is running at Cambridge University Library until 6 December This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers: Britain's 8 most haunted houses
From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers, Caitlin Blackwell Baines introduces us to the terrifying cast of phantoms said to dwell within the nation’s spookiest homes
1. Stirling Castle, Scotland From elusive sea monsters to shrieking banshees, Scotland is home to a host of supernatural beings – including, of course, ghosts. One of their best-known spectral celebrities is the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, who is said to haunt a staggering 10 properties, making her, perhaps, the best-travelled ghost in the nation. Among her main haunts is Stirling Castle, her childhood home in central Scotland. Perched atop a volcanic crag, surrounded by cliffs overlooking the River Forth, Stirling Castle was constructed in the early 12th century, originally as a military stronghold, acting as a strategic line of defence during the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296–1357). However, almost from the very beginning, Stirling was also a favourite royal residence. By the time a young Mary Stuart lived there in the 1540s, it was as much a palace as it was a fortress: her father, James V, had transformed it into one of the most opulent homes in Renaissance Britain. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Stirling-Castle-Bannockburn-1-8d83973.jpg" width="1200" height="960" alt="A large brown castle stands on a tree-covered hill, against a dark grey cloudy sky" title="Stirling Castle is one of several historic buildings said to be haunted by the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots – the ill-fated monarch who was imprisoned – and executed – upon the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I (Image by SpookyScotland.net)" /> Whatever happy childhood memories Mary may have had of Stirling would be tainted by the events of 21 April 1567. It was here on this day that the embattled queen would see her infant son (the future King James VI & I) for the last time. Soon after, she was forced to abdicate, flee the country, and eventually, in 1587, she was executed for treason under the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I. Perhaps it is for this reason that the melancholy monarch returns to the castle, perpetually searching for her long-lost child, even in the afterlife. She is said to be kept company by a dutiful servant – a young woman in green, who purportedly died in a fire while attempting to save her mistress. They are also joined by Stirling’s notorious ‘Highland Ghost’ – a mysterious man adorned in full Highland regalia, who is often mistaken for a costumed tour guide. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Raynham-Hall-ghostWHB5WT-f2f1e5a.jpg" width="4218" height="5059" alt="A black and white photograph of a staircase with a white ghostly figure in the middle" title="This photograph of Raynham Hall’s ‘Brown Lady’ – purportedly the ghost of former resident Lady Dorothy Townshend – caused a stir when it was first published in 1936 (Image by Alamy)" /> 2. Raynham Hall, Norfolk At its height in the Georgian period, Raynham Hall was nationally renowned for its innovative architecture, priceless art collection and powerful owner. Though originally constructed in the early 1600s, the stately red-brick manor we see today was largely the work of eminent early 18th-century architect William Kent, acting under the direction of Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend, a leader in the House of Lords. Like the house he lived in, Townshend was an imposing figure, known for his fiery temper and blustering delivery in parliament. And rumour had it, his aggressiveness was not solely reserved for political opponents. His long-suffering wife, Dorothy, may have also been a target of his ire. The story goes that Lady Dorothy Townshend (née Walpole, sister of prime minister Robert) endured an unhappy marriage. Some say she was unfaithful, while others claim it was her extravagant spending that incurred her husband’s wrath. In any case, she purportedly died under mysterious circumstances and continues to roam Raynham’s halls to this day. Read more | Five shocking tales from Britain’s royal palaces Over the years, there have been numerous reported sightings of Lady Townshend – or ‘The Brown Lady’ as she has come to be known, on account of the colour of her silk brocade dress – but perhaps none so dramatic as the encounter of photographers Hubert Provand and Indre Shira. In the autumn of 1936, while on assignment for Country Life magazine, Provand and Shira prepared to take a photo of Raynham’s main staircase. Just as they were setting up the shot, they suddenly caught sight of an ethereal, veiled form floating down the stairs. Acting fast, they snapped their photo and captured what is widely considered to be one of the most famous examples of ‘spirit photography’ in history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/50-Berkeley-SquareK07JMM-ffef8a3.jpg" width="743" height="1153" alt="A black and white photograph of a dark front door. Either side of it are iron railings, and there is an arch over the two steps leading up to it" title="Dare you open the door? Visitors to 50 Berkeley Square have been reporting strange goings-on since the mid-19th century (Image by Alamy)" /> 3. 50 Berkeley Square, Mayfair, Greater London With its elegant Georgian townhouses, luxury boutiques and Michelin star restaurants, the upscale district of Mayfair in central London may not seem like the natural setting for a ghost story. And yet, it is home to a property once christened the ‘Most Haunted House in London’. The offending structure can be found on Berkeley Square, a residential block first laid out in the mid-1700s by architect William Kent (the man behind Raynham Hall). From the outside, there’s nothing much to distinguish the townhouse at No 50 from its neighbours – but don’t let its staid, neoclassical façade fool you. The first reports of unusual activity at No 50 occurred in the mid-1800s. Nearby residents noticed strange sounds and smells, lights flickering in the windows at all hours of the night, and the noticeable signs of decay and abandon. Sceptics chalked this up to the eccentric habits of its owner, Thomas Myers, a recluse left heartbroken by the rejection of his fiancée. Nevertheless, rumours soon swirled that the house was haunted. View Green Video on the source website Some believed the ghost was a young woman who had jumped from an upper-storey window. Others claimed it was Myers himself, who had locked himself in the attic and driven himself mad. Still others maintained it was a preexisting entity that had possessed both Myers and the suicidal woman. Whatever the case, most Londoners came to fear and avoid No 50 – all save for a brave and foolhardy few. One such daredevil was Lord George Lyttleton, a Conservative statesman, who, in 1872, accepted a bet to stay a night alone at the house. Though incredulous of the stories, Lyttleton packed a pistol and was probably quite pleased he had done so, for when a dark, tendrilled apparition advanced towards him, he was able to defend himself. Firing a few rounds, he was certain he’d hit his mark. Yet, when the smoke settled, it revealed only spent shell casings and an empty attic. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Chillingham-Castle2BYB32Y-e4a1674.jpg" width="5081" height="3381" alt="A black and white photograph of a large castle with crenellated towers" title="This photograph of Chillingham Castle may be in black and white, but the building’s paranormal history is certainly colourful: its most famous ghoul is a boy in blue who appears to visitors inside a pink bedroom (Image by Alamy)" /> 4. Chillingham Castle, Northumberland Touted as Britain’s ‘Most Haunted Castle,’ Chillingham has a long and violent history. Once one of nearly 100 fortifications that dotted the bleak borderlands of England and Scotland, this 13th-century fortress served a pivotal role in the centuries-long rift between the two warring kingdoms. It was here, in 1298, that King Edward I launched his attack on William Wallace during the First War of Scottish Independence. Over the years, hundreds of England’s enemies were killed at Chillingham, many of them by torture in the castle’s dungeon and torture chamber – a cramped windowless pit located in a cellar beneath what is today a public tearoom. Strangely, however, these prisoners are not among the castle’s best-known ghostly residents. Instead, the most familiar phantom faces are those of women and children. There is the mysterious ‘Radiant Boy’ – an unknown child in blue who materialises before guests in the castle’s ‘Pink Bedroom’. And the legendary ‘Grey Lady’ – believed to be the ghost of Lady Mary Berkeley, whose husband, Ford Grey, 1st Earl of Tankerville, reportedly jilted her for her younger sister, leaving her alone and heartbroken in the castle. Modern visitors report the sounds of sobbing, the rustling of a heavy gown dragging along the castle’s corridors, and the faint aroma of rosewater. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Blickling-HallBPB4N5-54b2853.jpg" width="5637" height="3775" alt="A large red brick palace lit up from below by floodlights. Behind it, there are many trees in shadow and the sky is deep blue" title="Anne Boleyn is said to haunt several palaces and stately homes, including Blickling Hall near Norwich. The Tudor queen is thought to have been born at the manor that previously stood on the site (Image by Alamy)" /> 5. Blickling Hall, Norfolk Blickling Hall might be considered the English counterpart to Scotland’s Stirling Castle – though, on the face of it, they would seem to have little in common. Where Stirling is a medieval citadel looming over the gateway to the Scottish Highlands, Blickling is a Jacobean manor nestled in the heart of the Norfolk Broads. Just 20 miles east of Raynham Hall, one would think it would have more in common with its ‘haunted’ East Anglian neighbour. But as the presumed birthplace of Anne Boleyn, Blickling has a far stronger symbolic link to the childhood home of Scotland’s own tragic queen. Read more | Your history guide to Frogmore Cottage: who has lived there before? The existing structure, built for Sir Henry Hobart in 1616, was erected atop the ruins of a Tudor manor house once belonging to Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire – whose youngest daughter had the unfortunate honour of becoming Henry VIII’s second wife. On 19 May 1536, after just three years of marriage, Anne Boleyn was beheaded for adultery and treason. Like her Scottish counterpart, Anne is thought to haunt a number of historic properties, including Hever Castle (another childhood home), Windsor Castle (a brief residence), the Tower of London (the site of her death), and, of course, Blickling. Here, she is said to appear every year on the anniversary of her death, in a carriage driven by headless horses. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Heol-FanogGettyImages-1281060558-a4fffad.jpg" width="6000" height="4000" alt="A black farmhouse stands on a hill, with a single light shining in the middle. The farmhouse has a chimney at either end of the roof and behind it, the sky is dark grey" title="A spooky farmhouse. One such building, Heol Fanog (Welsh for ‘Road to the Peaks’), gained notoriety in 2022 when it became the subject of hit podcast The Witch Farm (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. Heol Fanog, Brecon Beacons, Wales A relatively recent entry into the annals of haunted historic Britain, Heol Fanog farmhouse in South Wales has gained contemporary notoriety thanks to the exposure of the hit BBC Sounds podcast, The Witch Farm (2022). The series focuses on the occupancy of the Rich family, who lived on the farm for a seven-year period from 1989, during which time they claim to have experienced a litany of terrifying events. From cold spots to disembodied footsteps, inexplicable power surges to noxious odours, and even full-blown apparitions and demonic possessions, the experiences of the Rich family have been likened to that of the Lutz family of Amityville Horror fame. While these stories are relatively new – and, indeed, the farmhouse itself is less than a hundred years old – legends about the isolated rural property have circulated for well over a century. The area’s strong association with witchcraft, occultism and Celtic mysticism, combined with the dark legacy of a gruesome local murder in the 19th century, have earned the property its nickname: ‘The Witch Farm’ or ‘Hellfire Farm’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Hampton-CourtG37YX0-eab2b03.jpg" width="4458" height="2903" alt="Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, is supposedly one of Hampton Court’s many resident phantoms. Early 20th-century postcards depicted the queen’s ‘ghost’ using a crude double-exposure effect (Image by Alamy)" title="Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, is supposedly one of Hampton Court’s many resident phantoms. Early 20th-century postcards depicted the queen’s ‘ghost’ using a crude double-exposure effect (Image by Alamy)" /> 7. Hampton Court Palace, Greater London Historic Royal Palaces certainly have their hands full. In addition to managing some of the nation’s highest profile heritage landmarks, catering to some 4 million visitors each year, they also have ghosts to contend with. Several properties in their portfolio – including the Tower of London, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace – are allegedly haunted. And while it’s hard to say which one of them is the most haunted, Hampton Court is definitely a strong contender. Construction on the iconic Tudor palace began in 1515 under the direction of Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York – Henry VIII’s chief advisor. At the time, Wolsey was one of the kingdom’s richest and most influential figures and he intended to build a home to reflect his position. In this he succeeded; however, within just a few years of his home’s completion, Wolsey had fallen from favour. Shortly before he died in 1530, he was ordered to surrender the palace to the king. Just 15 miles from London, the palace quickly became a favourite royal retreat. Read more | Seven of history's most disturbing ghost ship stories that will haunt your dreams While many monarchs have resided in Hampton Court over the centuries, the palace is indelibly linked with the reign of Henry VIII. As such, it should come as no surprise that the most familiar phantoms are members of the Henrician court. There’s Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife, who died from complications of childbirth, and allegedly still holds a solemn vigil on the palace’s Silverstick staircase; Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife, whose ghost is said to run screaming down the aptly-named ‘Haunted Gallery’, endlessly replaying a failed attempt to reach her husband to beg him to spare her from execution; and maybe even Old King Hal himself. Some believe it was the ghost of the king who was captured on the viral CCTV footage that made headlines around the world in the winter of 2003. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Treasurers-HouseTopfoto0780551-5b87db0.jpg" width="3442" height="2284" alt="A cellar with dirty brick walls. To the left, there is an empty fireplace with a dark tunnel, and on the right, there are two boxes stacked on one another" title="The infamous cellar at the Treasurer’s House, York. In 1953, a young plumber’s apprentice claimed to have witnessed Roman soldiers marching through a wall (Image by Topfoto)" /> 8. Treasurer's House, York, North Yorkshire Beneath the soaring spires of York Minster, scores of visitors amble along pedestrian thoroughfares lined with gastropubs, gift shops and historic buildings. The din of casual conversation is occasionally interrupted by the booming oratory of tour guides who lead groups of tourists down winding cobble-stoned lanes and narrow alleyways (idiosyncratically referred to as ‘snickleways’ by the locals). These merry little bands are on the hunt for haunted houses, and in York – reputedly the ‘Most Haunted City in Britain’ – they will not be disappointed. Dozens of properties compete for the title of ‘Most Haunted House’ in York, and while there is no clear victor, there is one property that can lay claim to what is, perhaps, the best authenticated ghost story in British history. That is the Treasurer’s House – a Grade I listed National Trust property with foundations dating all the way back to the early 12th century. Its best-known ghost story, however, has nothing to do with its medieval history. In 1953, an 18-year-old apprentice plumber called Harry Martindale was hired to install a boiler in the property’s ancient cellar. Working alone and in silence, Martindale was startled by the distant sound of a trumpet. The sound grew closer, and suddenly, what appeared to be a Roman soldier with a plumed helmet emerged from a wall, followed by a cart horse and a band of other soldiers, all dressed in green and carrying round shields. If this weren’t strange enough, the soldiers appeared to be cut off at the knees. Though Martindale’s claims were initially dismissed as hallucinations, the subsequent discovery of the Via Decumana, a Roman road lying about 15 inches below the cellar floor, gave credence to his story. What’s more, his description of the soldiers’ attire – originally deemed inaccurate based on existing historical knowledge – was later confirmed to be consistent with the regiment stationed at the Roman outpost of Eboracum (i.e. modern-day York). Caitlin Blackwell Baines is an art historian and author who specialises in Georgian art and architecture. She is the author of How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession (Profile Books, 2025) This article was first published in the Apple News October 2025 bonus issue
“A tidal wave of digital material will overwhelm recordkeeping institutions”: the future of history
If you’ve ever posted a comment on social media, you’ve created a potential source for future historians. But what problems does this mass of new material pose? Matt Elton asked historians Jane Winters and John Wills about how recent archives differ from those of the past – and how experts might make sense of them
Matt Elton: How do the kinds of records created now and in the recent past differ from those left in previous centuries? Jane Winters: Records and sources now come in a whole range of formats. In some cases, they are very familiar analogue sources that have become digital, whereas in others they are in a completely new format. Newspapers offer a great example of how this has changed: we used to read them only in physical form. Then those physical newspapers were digitised, keeping essentially the same structure. We now have both physical and digital newspapers, which differ in both form and content. An issue of The Guardian published in print today will not contain the same information as the online version: there will also be multimedia material and lots of online comments and conversations, whereas in the past you would have had only letters to the editor, for instance. And to take the example of people’s reflective writing, that’s a type of source that has also moved into new formats. A diary is not exactly the same as a blog entry or a post on social media, for instance. John Wills: One example that offers an interesting way of thinking about some of these issues is the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon – the point in 2023 when the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer were released at the same time. That’s a very recent instance of the kind of cultural moment that’s really interesting to research – but doing so is not easy, because you’re dealing not just with the films themselves but also the digital content produced by the films’ fandoms, the actors’ response to that content, and the wider public responses to those two movies, in a way that we’ve never been able to do before. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/2RKFGYE-8d3d650.jpg" width="4475" height="2983" alt="A movie poster shows characters from the films Oppenheimer and Barbie, creating a layered montage to promote "Barbenheimer". That word is written in pink across the bottom" title="A poster by graphic designer Sean Longmore celebrating the simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer in 2023. Today’s wealth of online content is a boon and a challenge for historians (Image by Alamy)" /> Jane Winters: An important characteristic of a digital archive that doesn’t have an analogue or print equivalent is the mixture of formats it contains. It’s not just text, images and moving images, but also all the other novel elements and forms of communication – memes, gifs, emojis – and they’re not all always available in an easy-to-search format. The Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) is one of the major online archives, and it contains a huge amount of this kind of material – but in a very unstructured form. Focusing on the new kinds of sources that emerged in the late 20th and 21st centuries, are there particular examples that reveal new things about society? John Wills: One of the areas I explore is the history of video games, which we still tend to see as a recent phenomenon despite it dating back at least 50 years. It’s a medium in which the huge volume of material can be both a great opportunity and faintly overwhelming. There are a few ways in which video games can be useful historical sources. First, a game set in the past can reflect cultural views about that period of history at the time the game was made. Read more | Artificial intelligence: a modern advance or an ancient nightmare? Second, they can also provide ways for the public to get into history: the Red Dead Redemption game series [set on the US frontier in the late 19th and early 20th century], for example, has proved to be an entry point to ideas about and narratives of the American West for many people in the same way that TV or film can. And finally, you can sometimes go into the online world of a game itself and talk to its players about their memories and experiences of that game. That’s so different from how we would have worked on the history of memory in previous decades! These kinds of unique opportunities are why we’ve started to build video games into our understanding of history over the past few decades. Jane Winters: Another recent source of data that’s particularly exciting for historians is social media, because the voices and stories of people who would never have previously ended up in archives – unless they encountered the state at some point –are now doing so. It’s easy for anybody with access to the internet to create all kinds of content, and there are chances that at least some of it will end up in a national archive. That brings its own problems, because people aren’t always considering this when posting an angry Instagram comment! But that really rich conversation is something we haven’t had before, and has huge potential. There are substantial social media archives already, and they are going to grow. This presents a few challenges. One is an issue of preservation and storage: how much do we want to keep, particularly given the environmental impact of digital archiving? We often think of digital records as existing in the ‘cloud’, but that’s in many ways a very unhelpful term, because of course they exist in physical infrastructure. Another key issue is that this is often not a truly global record: there is inequity in terms of who has access to the internet, and therefore who is able to have their voices recorded in this way. As a concrete example, an exercise led by the International Internet Preservation Consortium collected the websites and other digital media produced in response to the Covid pandemic. It’s a pretty diverse collection, but there’s almost nothing from Africa and very little from China. So it skews in its story about that pandemic – which was, of course, a global phenomenon. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-2666817webready-aee0983.jpg" width="3458" height="2305" alt="A black and white photograph shows four men huddled around a newspaper" title="Men read a newspaper during the UK general strike, 1926. Historian Jane Winters highlights print media as a particularly revealing example of how online records have changed across recent decades (Image by Getty Images)" /> Despite these limitations, is the depth and extent of this inclusion in the historical record unprecedented? Jane Winters: I think so, and certainly in the sense that people are now creating the material themselves rather than being described by someone else, such as a state body. That ability to tell your own story, and the fact that different kinds of people will routinely end up in archives, is exciting. John Wills: I agree – particularly about the issues of inclusivity and diversity. Historians have always been making those kinds of choices about how to process that historical record, so in some ways that’s nothing new. What potential issues face historians using records created with, or stored on, more recent forms of technology? Jane Winters: A key issue is that digital records are often embedded in systems and structures, and we need to navigate those in order to replay them. Indeed, it’s very striking that the word ‘replay’ is used a lot in relation to web archives – it’s less about accessing material, and more about replaying content. I think this is only going to increase as we move as a culture towards using more and more multimedia platforms, so we need to collect the information that lets us understand the structures and systems used to store this content. One really useful way of framing this is the idea of the ‘material culture’ of these records. We need to preserve the original form of these digital records so we understand how to work with them and how to reuse them. Memory institutions – places such as the British Library and the National Archives – are making sure they have rooms with equipment and versions of particular computers to replay floppy disks, for example. Things like digital forensics come into play, too, to make sure that you are not altering a file when you open it. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history John Wills: Video game consoles, for example, have very short lifespans. Even one that sells well might be publicly available for only 10 years, and will then degrade. An emulator can show what a game was like, and you can watch people playing it on YouTube, but that will give you only one view of that game world – what one player did, rather than a wider sense of what the game’s about. Institutions have been set up to preserve video games and their history – for example, Sheffield’s National Videogame Museum. But this is a vast history – one console might play a few thousand games – and there are questions about who’s responsible for preserving the technology, and how. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/ACNSCREENSHOT141206230815PMCESTcmykwebready-6b6395b.jpg" width="1924" height="1283" alt="A soldier wearing gold and red armour and mask and a red and black headdress holds a sword up, fighting an unseen opponent" title="A scene from 2023 video game Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR. Such electronic forms of entertainment can prove to be useful historical sources, argues John Wills (Image by Games Press)" /> So for these sources to be as useful as possible, we need to preserve and understand the context in which they were made and used? Jane Winters: Yes – and there’s a concern that context disappears very easily from digital records. ‘Context collapse’ is something that gets talked about in relation to social media – the idea that it doesn’t take long before something is completely decontextualised and reused. It can become hard to trace where a digital record started, particularly if a crucial piece of information has gone – for example, if the original account was closed, it might exist in a very different context from that in which it was created. Because so much of this is happening in commercial platforms, there isn’t the attention to public documentation that you would get in a library or an archive. Talking about commercial platforms, there’s been a recent phenomenon of TV and film companies deleting material from their archives – or, in some cases, not releasing films at all. Does this point to any specifically 21st-century issues? John Wills: This is something you could call ‘digital demolition’, because it can be very conscious and deliberate. It’s sometimes the result of restricting access to archive material in order to create a paywall and charge for access. The online archive of MTV News, which is an incredible resource for people trying to understand the entertainment of the 1980s and 90s, was removed from the internet last year, for example. But it’s important to remember that this isn’t new, and that TV and film records have often been lost. We’ve got very few of the silent movies of the early 20th century, and Charlie Chaplin destroyed one of his own movies [as a tax write-off], for instance. One of the dangers is that we often don’t see TV or film productions as useful or valuable. A classic example is the tranche of Doctor Who episodes that went missing in the late 1960s and early 70s. Jane Winters: We also have a tendency to think about online platforms and content-creation companies as archives. They’re not, and they don’t have an archival remit or responsibility – they think of that data in very different ways from historians. In 2019 [social media site] Myspace lost years of photos, video and music because of a faulty server migration, for example. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/B261CNwebready-e53ca76.jpg" width="5102" height="3401" alt="Social network Myspace hit headlines in 2019 for losing 12 years’ worth of user content. Such platforms should not be seen as archives, says Jane Winters (Image by Alamy)" title="Social network Myspace hit headlines in 2019 for losing 12 years’ worth of user content. Such platforms should not be seen as archives, says Jane Winters (Image by Alamy)" /> Another issue is the vast volume of records. How will experts make sense of all of the data being created and stored? Jane Winters: The National Archives described this volume as a “tidal wave of digital material… which in its scale, diversity of format, and complexity of structure will overwhelm many existing recordkeeping institutions and practices”. And the scale is mind-boggling: The Wayback Machine has more than 946 billion web pages, largely accessed through keyword searching. You can find what you’re looking for, but you may have no sense of how vital or representative it is because there’s so much material. We will have to develop strategies to find out what’s in some of these digital archives before we can start to dig into them and do the kind of research we want to. We talk about ‘web archives’, but they’re not archives in a traditional sense, and that creates interesting challenges for researchers, both now and in the future. Read more | Eastern promises: the long and troubled history of Britain's relations with China Can we identify a moment when this avalanche of records began? Jane Winters: It’s not been the same in different sectors: the British Library was collecting millions of websites as early as 2013, so that’s already a huge collection. But I think the anticipated digital deluge of government records hasn’t really happened yet, though it is coming. John Wills: It does depend on the area. If you’re working on events in the 1980s or 90s, which saw the advent of 24-hour news coverage, the volume of visual culture can sometimes seem overwhelming. And that information may be supplied in an unreliable way. One of the big new challenges facing historians and other experts is the way that platforms and algorithms work, because they can potentially mislead us as scholars by pushing the most common citation or the view that’s been promoted hardest. We’re not necessarily getting an open, full picture of the past – we are getting a version shaped by artificial intelligence (AI) and other forms of machine learning. The data has already gone through a level of selection and adaptation – and that’s a real issue for us. Is AI going to become a growing problem for historians? Jane Winters: It will be a huge issue. That’s not to say there isn’t already misinformation in archives – we need only think about fraudulent medieval charters, for instance! But the scale is different, as is the entanglement between trustworthy information and misinformation. It’s not the role of archives to say if material can be trusted, but as historians we need enough information to make judgments for ourselves. We have the skills – we spend our time assessing information – but we need to have enough contextual material to judge its validity. Finally, considering all these challenges, how might historians in the future make sense of the late 20th and early 21st centuries? John Wills: It’s interesting to think about the image we have of future historians. An episode of recent Star Trek series Discovery features an ‘eternal gallery and archive’: a beautiful repository of items and books from around the universe, all presented uncritically as completely reliable information. It’s an example of the idea that we’ll have access to sources in a utopian way, whereas the reality looks like being one in which, as Jane says, things are complex and entangled, and historians have to negotiate increasingly problematic routes to access material. Jane Winters: Historians thrive on challenges: having to put together evidence and perhaps take it in a different direction because you found a new piece of information. We’ve only ever been able to tell partial stories; the challenge for us now is to think about how partial those histories might be. That’s why discussions like this are so important – to think about how we can ensure that as much of the material as possible is preserved, where the conversations around that need to happen, which organisations should be involved, and really work together. So many communities of practice are developing around this, and I have confidence that the work happening in our national libraries, archives and other places will ensure that historians of the future will have enough material to work with. Jane Winters is professor of digital humanities at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London John Wills is professor of American media and culture at the University of Kent This article was first published in the October 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine